Photo unleashes new Kate mystery

The Princess of Wales has popped up in a highly unusual place and no one is certain what has triggered this shake up.

Well, it’s a dark day for London milliners, that small group whose entire careers are devoted to creating flimsy, decorative frippery worth about as much as a second hand Honda.

Kate, the Princess of Wales and patron saint of the chapeau has just appeared in public wearing the same hat for the third time in just over a year.

Call it thrifty, call it a newfound awareness of the environmental drag of silk flowers, call it forgetting to pack a suitable other topper, it’s still bad news for the hat industry.

This weekend, the princess was photographed arriving at church in Ballater, Scotland, along with husband and newest member of Beards Anonymous, Prince William.

Kate Middleton at Crathie Kirk with Prince William on September 22, 2024. Picture: Newsline Media/Goffphotos

However, Kate’s repeating of her Hicks & Brown fedora is only the tip of the highly unusual iceberg today. What no one can quite explain is, what the dickens were the Prince and Princess of Wales actually doing in Scotland?

Royal life is, you see, about as predictable as Mariah Carey’s annual Christmas-time re-animation from her personal cryogenic chamber and domination of global shopping centre muzak charts. The Waleses’ lives take the concept of a routine and say, “hold my Earl Grey”. They generally go to the same places, at the same time, every, bloody year. Their annual sortie north to Scotland is a cemented-on, superglued-in, epoxy-affixed part of the annual calendar - but takes place in August, putting them back in England for the start of the school year.

Thus, as we peer through our Poirot-esque monocle, what are they doing back there? And moreover, without their kidlets who were at the other end of the country most probably?

Willam and Kate are two people famously and zealously devoted to reproducing the bourgeois normalcy of the princess’ own childhood for their three little ones. (‘It’s called a dishwasher Louis…’)

They do the school run with a degree of diligence that is either a highly commendable bit of hands-on parenting or a cunning means of avoiding Bulgarian trade delegations at Buckingham Palace. You decide.

The happy family. Picture: @KensingtonRoyal on X

Either way, William and Kate are behind the wheel of their family Audi station wagon and lugging kit from the very day that their kids’ school, Lambrook in Berkshire, when term goes back, which in this case was on the 4th of September.

So, what were the Waleses doing 1000km north of where they would normally be on a weekend in the middle of term time? Why the sudden and highly unusual break in their standard programme? (According to the Daily Mail, Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis did not go to Scotland with their parents.)

Making this all the more ‘huh?’ worthy is the fact that this is a big week for William travel-wise who will be British Airways-ing himself to New York for the third Eathsthot Prize Innovation Summit. (Also on the list, dodging brother and psychic irritant Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex who will also be in the city reminding people he would very much like a go at being a statesman too.)

Why would the Prince of Wales, even if he is a man who can readily access jets, commercial flights and even his Pa King Charles’ private train, want to go from Windsor to the far northern tip of Scotland back to Windsor and then to New York in the space of days?

Adding to the mystery here is the fact that Kate is, as the world knows all too well, recovering from her cancer fight, having only recently announced she has finished chemotherapy, breaking the news via a three-minute video that could double up as a hair care advert.

A snippet from the royals’ video. Picture: Will Warr/Prince and Princess of Wales/Instagram

In the videos’ voice over, she makes abundantly clear that her health is her number one priority and that her “path to healing and full recovery is long”.

The glossy, three-minute video was shot at the family’s Norfolk estate Anmer Hall in August meaning that the still-recovering princess has gone from Windsor to Scotland to Windsor to Scotland and will go back to Windsor in the space of about six weeks.

As she herself said earlier this year, she has “good days and bad days” so why expend the energy and time required to undertake this week’s extra travel? And when it involves leaving their kids behind?

(Though we are hardly looking at a Home Alone situation. Beyond the Waleses’ household staff and their lifelong, devoted nanny Maria Teresa Turrion Borrallo, any duo of inept burglars would find themselves being marched off to an MI5 black site faster than you can say ‘Merv’.)

As of Monday morning, no coherent or even remotely sensible theory for why William and Kate were in Scotland only weeks after they had gotten home.

One consideration here is King Charles who, along with Queen Camilla, has been enjoying a lengthy summer break up north. (How much of this is driven by His Majesty’s incurable urge for kilt-wearing and feeling the nippy North Sea breeze on his legs, I cannot say.)

Princess Catherine, Prince William and their children. Picture: @KensingtonRoyal on X

The only concrete date set in his diary, as is known, is his tour of Australia and Samoa in late October, thus raising the possibility that the Waleses have gone north to gobble organic local salmon and to see Their Majesties.

But again, they only just saw them plus there is always Zoom.

As we get terrifyingly close to Christmas (and just like that, someone set Mariah to ‘defrost’) what is clear is that 2024 was the year that normal well and truly left the royal picture.

Already, in August, a friend of the prince and princess told the Daily Beast’s Tom Sykes that even once Kate is fully better, there won’t necessarily be a resumption of normal programming for her.

“My understanding is that people are going to have to get used to seeing a lot less of Kate,” the friend has said. “Like a lot of people who have a brush with mortality, Kate is going to prioritise the things that matter to her from now on. In her case, that means her kids.”

Well, her kids and her Hicks & Brown fedora it would seem.

Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.

Originally published as Photo unleashes new Kate mystery