Crowds push forward to see the birth announcement of the newest addition to the royal family. The news was placed in the forecourt of Buckingham Palace in London on July 22. Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, the wife of Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, gave birth to the boy at 4:24 p.m. on July 22. He weighed 8 pounds, 6 ounces. A name has not been announced for the child, who is third in line to the British throne. 
People clamored for their chance to see and photograph the birth announcement that was place on a golden easel by the queen's press secretary. 
The London Eye Ferris wheel on the banks of the Thames is lit up in red, blue and white to mark the birth of the boy on July 22. 
The fountains at Trafalgar Square are lit blue to signify the birth of a boy on July 22. 
Royal fans celebrate the announcement of the birth of a boy to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge at St. Mary's Hospital in London on July 22. 
Hayley Simmonds, an employee at the British restaurant and grocery Tea & Sympathy, celebrates the birth on July 22 by hanging a sign in the store's window in New York. 
Karen Milne, left, of Scotland, wears a Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge mask as she and friends celebrate the royal birth announcement at Ye Olde King's Head English Pub in Santa Monica, California, on July 22. 
Revelers crowd against the railing of Buckingham Palace in London after an official notice proclaiming the birth was put on display on July 22. 
Crowds gather outside Buckingham Palace on July 22 after the announcement of the birth. 
The queen's press secretary, Ailsa Anderson, left, and Badar Azim, a palace footman, place the official birth announcement on a golden easel in front of Buckingham Palace on July 22. 
Crowds gathered outside Buckingham Palace cheer as the Anderson places the birth announcement in front of the palace on July 22. 
A town crier reads the announcement of the birth outside the Lindo Wing of St. Mary's Hospital in London on July 22. 
Two of the gynecologists who attended to the duchess, Marcus Setchell, center, and Alan Farthing, right, leave the Lindo Wing of St. Mary's Hospital on July 22. 
Media gather outside the Lindo Wing of St. Mary's Hospital in London on July 22 as they await news of the birth. 
Crowds gather outside Buckingham Palace in London as news of Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge's, labor arrives on July 22. 
A Buckingham Palace official on July 22 hands the birth announcement to a colleague in a car to be driven from St. Mary's Hospital in London to Buckingham Palace. 
Police guard the Lindo Wing at St. Mary's Hospital in London as crowds gather and await news of the birth of the first child of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge on July 22. 
Royal supporters are interviewed by a television crew outside St. Mary's Hospital on July 22. 
Crowds gather behind a barricade outside St. Mary's Hospital as they wait for news of the birth on July 22. 
Hospital staff look out over a gathering crowd at St. Mary's Hospital in London on July 22. 
Royal fan Teba Diatta stands outside St. Mary's Hospital with a cake decorated for the occasion on July 22. 
Royal supporter Margaret Tyler holds decorative balloons as she waits outside St. Mary's Hospital in London on Saturday, July 20. 
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- Dan Jones: Royal births in past were world news events, as they were key to world politics
- He asks: Why, when Windsors have so little sway now, does a birth still captivate world?
- He says Brits care: royal family a link to nation's history; Americans' interest less clear
- Jones: Monarchy like reality show; a tie to old class system. Brits jazzed that world cares
Editor's note: Dan Jones is a historian and newspaper columnist based in London. His new book, "The Plantagenets" (Viking), is published in the U.S. by Viking-Penguin and in the UK by William Collins. Follow him on Twitter.
(CNN) -- On January 6, 1367, at the Abbey of St. Andrew in Bordeaux, a royal baby was born. It was a boy. His father was the Prince of Wales, Edward of Woodstock (known to history as the Black Prince). His mother was a fabulously glamorous princess called Joan of Kent.
The child's grandfather was the aging King Edward III, and although at the time of his birth little Richard of Bordeaux had a brother, the elder child would die, and Richard would grow up to be king of England himself, crowned as Richard II in 1377, when he was just 10 years old. His reign would be more or less a disaster, but we needn't delay ourselves too much with that right now.
Richard of Bordeaux's birth was a moment of broad international interest. It mattered to the French, with whom the English were engaged in the Hundred Years War. It mattered in what we now call Spain, where the Black Prince was waging a brutal military campaign. It mattered to the other dignitaries of Europe. Richard's baptism was attended by three monarchs: Jaime IV, king of Mallorca; Richard, king of Armenia; and Pedro, the deposed king of Castile. In short, insofar as a medieval royal birth could be a world news event, this was.
Cohen: How to raise a royal baby
Where I stood today at St. Mary's Hospital in Paddington, London, where Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, Monday gave birth to a baby boy, there were no foreign kings and queens hanging about to take part in the pageantry. But the birth of the royal baby was a world news event all the same.
There were rolling news crews from all over the world, beaming back to every inch of the globe pictures of ... well, of rolling news crews from all over the world. They knocked shoulders with tourists and well-wishers, who ranged from idle passersby to devoted monarchists wanting to drop off gifts for mother and baby. A few actual patients of the hospital leaned in doorways or rolled around in wheelchairs, looking bemused. It was a sweaty, heaving scrum.
Why? How is it that when the power of the English royal family is a nano-fraction of what it once was, that the Windsors' celebrations and reproductions still captivate the world just as the births of Plantagenet and Tudor babies once did?
'Wicked' author: Royal baby stands for hope
The news crew with which I was filming today told me that they had also interviewed a sweet couple from Indiana, who said they thought that the British monarchy was marvelous. Given half a chance, said these beaming visitors and arbitrary bellwethers of American sentiment, they would gladly have a king and queen of the United States. Did someone say 1776? No? Thought not.
Media excited over royal baby's delivery 
Town crier announces birth of royal baby 
What's it like to raise a royal baby? I can't speak for the rest of the world, but in Britain it is fairly easy to analyze our own continuing fascination with, and popular enthusiasm for, the monarchy. Trite as it is to say, the royal family is a living link with our national history. Our history is built -- or taught, at any rate -- around reigns and dynasties. Our wonky constitution has largely evolved around the monarchy, from Magna Carta in 1215 to this year's Succession To The Crown Act, which provides (now, it seems, unnecessarily), for a girl to inherit royal power on equal standing in precedence to a younger brother.
Culturally, monarchy has also become a form of very upmarket reality TV show: a magazine-shifter and a newspaper-seller, whose present season has some really good characters, both old and young. There is human sympathy for the royals as "real people" who have been through "tough times," but there is also the sneaking voyeurism attached to a family anointed, inescapably, with mystical celebrity. Who needs the Kardashians? We have the Royals, and they've been going for nearly a millennium.
And then, of course, we secretly recognize that the royal family is virtually the only surviving relic of the rigid class system of the British past. Even if (most of us) don't miss it in practice, there is a shared snobbish pride among swathes of the conservative middle Britain in being able to present ourselves to the world as a land of ranks and titles, blue blood and high birth, a nation that still has a nonsensical strain of privilege at its heart.
The very fact that this seems to fly in the face of every liberal credo of our times -- equality, democracy, meritocracy, openness, transparency, fairness -- only makes it more delicious. There is something medieval at the core of modern Britain, and I think we rather like the fact that the whole world is still prepared to sit up and celebrate it.
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The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Dan Jones.
