( 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 need n'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 . I ca n'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 . Opinion : Why I would n't want to be royal baby . 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 ) do n'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 . Opinion : Baby helps make a monarchy better . 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 . The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Dan Jones .
Dan Jones : Royal births in past were world key 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 Americans care : royal birth a link to nation 's history ; Americans ' history less clear . Jones : Monarchy like a show ; a link to old class system . Brits jazzed that world cares .