Who will hug them now? Who will take them to McDonald's for a Big Mac? Who will share the screams and laughter as they drench themselves on the hairraising rides of the theme parks? Who will snuggle up beside them on a sofa on a wintry Saturday night as they settle down to watch a popular movie?
Reams have been written - and will be written - about the implications of the tragic death of Diana, Princess of Wales, for the future of British monarchy.
But these questions - simple, obvious and not-at-all-prurient - help define the nature and depth of this nation's grief as it prepares to bury "the peoples' princess". They help explain the tensions now in evidence as the people search for meaning in this senseless, still unbelievable, tragedy. And they betray the extent to which the publicly-fought battles of Prince Charles and Princess Diana have left a lasting impact on public perceptions of an institution whose function, above all else, is to provide a focal point for national unity.
Television tributes this week have inevitably brought reminders of the tragic life and times of the beautiful princess - spelt out, with her assent, in Andrew Morton's book Diana: Her True Story - but still more spectacularly by Diana herself in that never-to-be-forgotten Panorama interview. The fairytale wedding had been a sham. There were, she said, three in the marriage from the outset. The royal "firm" proved itself cold, unfeeling and sometimes malevolent in face of her personal problems. She felt herself treated as "a basket case". And, as it became clear she was determined on escape, the establishment "enemy" set out to get her.
As she stripped away the mystique which had long surrounded royalty, a fascinated public looked into the heart of the House of Windsor and many decided they did not like what they saw. No matter the confession of her own relationship with James Hewitt, nor the damage to the very institution her eldest son would one day inherit.
Those who took her side saw simply that she had been driven to it.
Not all, of course, took her side. Until her death opinion remained divided. But as both sides draw together in common appreciation of what this extraordinary woman was - what she meant to so many people, and how their lives around the world are touched by her dreadful death - it is the words and revelations of Charles himself which so acutely inform the concern for the futures of Prince William and Prince Harry.
Among the scenes revisited this week was one of a very young Prince Charles greeting his mother, Queen Elizabeth, after a protracted official visit abroad. Reared in the cold, precedentdriven formality of Palace courtiers and their arcane rule books, the young prince stepped forward to shake his mother's hand and formally bow his head. What powerful contrast with the imagery of a radiant Diana, returned from a similar tour of duty, rushing along the deck of Brittania to lovingly sweep her two boys into her arms.
Who, watching such scenes, would not feel compassion and pain for the young Charles? Or relief, for William and Harry, that their upbringing had been so different.
We know that the proud Prince Charles looks on his sons as the finest living tribute to their dead mother. For all that had passed between them, it is said the relationship between Charles and Diana had moved to a new level in the months since their divorce. Diana recently said she still loved the prince, although she was no longer "in love" with him. They exchanged letters, met from time and time, and were agreed on all important matters concerning their children. This autumn would have seen them together, as a family, on board for Brittania's last journey - a gesture confirming the prince's understanding, and gladness, that Diana had brought a depth and warmth to the lives of his children sadly lacking in his own.
The anxiety - manifest in much of the press, and in the comments of commentators and public alike - is that the royal family, revealed to us by both Prince Charles and Princess Diana, will be simply unable to fill that unimaginable void in the lives of the two young princes.
Prince Charles is a highly intelligent, introspective man - dedicated to his causes - but seemingly never more content than when dressed in full Highland regalia tramping the heather at Balmoral. It was Princess Diana who gave the children their suburban experience; who made them wait in queues; who brought them with her on visits to hostels for the homeless; who insisted on showing them life in the raw.
Prince Charles, like Princess Anne, does wonderful work. The Prince's Trust, in particular, was blazing a trail for the development of the discarded and dispossessed in the inner cities long before it became politically fashionable. Yet for all that, the sense persists that the leading royals are other-wordly.
Rightly or wrongly, that sense has been compounded in silly ways this week. Not everybody likes the idea of Downing Street muscling in. Against that, it was Mr Blair who most instinctively captured and expressed the public mood. The perception is that he has nudged an instinctively reluctant palace toward Saturday's national commemoration of Princess Diana's life and work. Protocol, say most people, be damned. They simply cannot understand why the Royal Standard should not fly at half mast over Balmoral. They cannot comprehend why, because the queen is not in residence, no flag at all flies over Buckingham Palace. They find it extraordinary that no member of the royal family has broken silence to share their feelings with the country at large.
It is not the royal way. Nor, in fairness, would it be the way of many private citizens. In their grief the people, in truth, remain confused about what precisely they do want from their royal family. Almost certainly they do not wish to see their Head of State reduced to tears and helplessness, but they do clearly want something . . . some sign of that humanity, compassion and feeling of which Princess Diana's life was a celebration.
Inevitably, fittingly, it seems they will get it on Saturday morning from William and Harry. Prince William is apparently determined to walk with his brother and father behind the gun carriage bearing Princess Diana's coffin to Westminster Abbey. It is the picture which will adorn every front page around the world. But it will also, surely, mark the moment when the world agrees to step decisively back - comprehending their need, greater than ever, of the time and space their mother battled to give them, and which she tragically failed to find for herself.