‘Brutal’ truth hiding in smiling Princess Kate photograph
Stunning photographs of a beaming Princess of Wales hide a painful truth that threatened to break the royal family.
Royals
Don't miss out on the headlines from Royals. Followed categories will be added to My News.
If you didn’t know any better, the photos simply show Kate, the Princess of Wales happily making her way into Westminster Abbey for a nice bit of a Christmassy tra-la-la.
Deck the halls and what have you.
It was December 2023, and for several years the princess had hosted an annual carols concert which has seen her break the key showbiz tenets and work with both children and animals.
Here she was, at it again, a nice white pantsy get-up on.
Every year it’s a rousing success, a show of extended royal family unity and togetherness and such wholesome goodness it would make Pollyanna want to rebel and sneak out the back for a fag.
That 2023 Abbey outing looked like every other, save for the fact that Kate had decided to dress like a chic modern woman and not like she was auditioning for a bit part on Sister Wives. She looked sleek, in control and never better.
She had no idea that within weeks, she would be propelled headlong into what would be a “brutal” year that nearly brought the royal family to the brink, pushing things to as close to breaking point as they have come.
2024 beckoned, bursting with promise and some other rosy imagery.
And then cold hard reality hit.
First, in January, Kate was hospitalised for planned abdominal surgery and then she essentially disappeared off the face of the Earth, sparking one of the most surreal and bizarre chapters in modern royal history.
Conspiracy theories about her whereabouts tore across social media, growing ever wilder and more hysterical.
When she and William were videoed visiting a Windsor farm shop in March, the footage was soon being analysed like it had been shot by Zapruder in Dallas circa 1963.
Then came Mother’s Day that same month, and what should have been a nice sweet family shot – one that would put an end to the febrile madness – only blew up in the princess’ face.
The image, showing the princess and her three children, was soon slapped with a humiliating kill notice by the major photo agencies thanks to Kate’s amateurish photoshopping efforts.
Less than two weeks later, everything changed again.
Sitting on a bench with a rippling sea of spring daffodils behind her, the Princess of Wales revealed that her doctors had discovered she had cancer and she was about to begin preventive chemotherapy.
The internet not so much broke as resoundingly snapped.
The video of her announcing the news has been viewed more than 213 million times on just the Waleses’ X and Instagram.
The Waleses’ work slate was wiped clean, the delete key banged and banged some more as the prince and princess’ schedule was scrubbed. A reported possible tour of Italy was, of course, scratched. Any other plans such as her maybe accompanying Prince William to Cape Town for his Earthshot Prize were also scrapped.
In November, William said, “It’s been dreadful. It’s probably been the hardest year in my life. Trying to get through everything else and keep everything on track has been really difficult … But from a personal family point of view, it’s been, yeah, it’s been brutal”.
Luckily, in September came a bookend of a video, this one a soft-hued, nearly excessively sentimental, professionally shot three minute number declaring that Kate was cancer-free.
Let the bells ring out.
But things have not, and might not for a very long while, really go back to same old, same old; this story is far from over.
Earlier this year, a Buckingham Palace insider told the Daily Beast’s Tom Sykes: “My understanding is that people are going to have to get used to seeing a lot less of Kate. The priority for her now is going to be family and the children”.
“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.”
Separately, in September, a friend of the Waleses’ told Sykes, “It’s the reset to end all resets. This is Kate and William as they mean to go on. It’s family first and f*** the haters, f*** the press, f*** Harry and Meghan”.
In December, as respected royal biographer Robert Hardman told People, “We are being encouraged not to look at this as a chapter that’s over and then it’s back to normal, because cancer doesn’t work like that … there’s no sense of trying to gloss over the reality that it’s an unpredictable disease.”
At Kate’s carol concert this year, she was caught saying to singer Paloma Faith, “I didn’t know this year was going to be the year that I’ve just had”.
How must it have felt walking into Westminster Abbey for this year’s concert? How could Kate have not, at some point, paused and remembered the person she had been only 12 short months ago?
Her 2024 was thoroughly derailed by cancer and what remains to be seen is whether her health battle has irrevocably changed the course of what lies after this hitherto unthinkable “reset”.
This year has proven that the royal family are all too human, subject to the same slings and arrows of fate as all of us.
When the clock strikes midnight on New Year’s Eve, you’d have to think that the prince and princess might share a large sigh of relief, their “brutal” year over.
If ever there might be a moment that demands a magnum of something really good and definitely vintage to be celebratorily popped opened, it will be precisely at 12:01am in the Waleses’ kitchen.
Hell, after the “dreadful” time they have had, make it two.
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 ‘Brutal’ truth hiding in smiling Princess Kate photograph
Hopes Kate is back at it after yet another radiant royal engagement
Princess Catherine has undertaken her second royal engagement in just over a week after announcing she is in remission from cancer, sparking hopes we could soon be seeing even more of her.
Explosive Meghan report could ruin her
In the aftermath of yet another blistering story about the Duchess of Sussex, there’s one mysterious document that could change everything.