For Prince Harry, his start at Eton College began with heartbreak.

The Duke of Sussex, now 41, arrived at the prestigious all-boys boarding school in 1998, just one year after his mother Princess Diana’s death, and he later described the experience in his memoir Spare as “a profound shock.”

Hoping Prince William would help him settle in, Harry instead recalled his older brother asking him to “pretend I didn’t know him,” explaining that Eton had become his sanctuary.

“He was forging his own life, and he wasn’t willing to give that up,” Harry wrote in his 2023 memoir.

Prince William was already entrenched at Eton when his brother enrolled and years later, Harry admitted the rejection hurt deeply. Sports became the refuge for the royal who grew up playing rugby, soccer, cricket, and polo, and a welcome outlet.

“Sport held me together,” he told Time in June.

“I was in way, way over my head,” he wrote in Spare about the academic adjustment to the Windsor institution that has educated generations of leaders, including 20 prime ministers — and will welcome Prince George this fall.

On June 16, Kensington Palace confirmed that Prince George will attend Eton in September, ending years of speculation about where Prince William and Kate Middleton would send their oldest son, who follows his father in the direct line of succession to the throne.

Though many royal watchers expected the couple would choose a more modern educational path, they ultimately opted for the school that helped shape William, 43.

“Eton was a much-needed haven for William,” royal biographer Sally Bedell Smith tells PEOPLE in this week’s exclusive cover story. “It will give George a rigorous education he will need for his role.”

Queen Elizabeth’s former press secretary Ailsa Anderson adds, “Both William and Catherine carried out a lot of research to make the right decision,” and twice toured Kate’s alma mater, Marlborough College.

However, source close to the family tells PEOPLE, “George has always wanted to follow in his dad’s footsteps.”