Personal Kate Middleton ‘love’ letter is released ahead of a massive royal family gathering
A highly personal message from the Princess of Wales has been published ahead of her returning to the spotlight this week for a massive royal get-together.
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It’s always oddly intimate to see a member of the royal family’s handwriting.
Every few months a letter from Diana, Princess of Wales to such luminaries as her chiropodist or chakra cleanser will end up on an auction block. Seeing her curlicues and flourishes, it’s so very personal, so very real, a reminder she was flesh and blood and not just a mythic creation.
These days, we very rarely ever see the handwriting of the royal family, which is what makes the latest development from Kate, the Princess of Wales, that much more intriguing.
There is her penmanship and her signature on a new and emotional letter obtained by The Times which uses the word ‘love’ 11 times, 10 more times than the late Queen ever used it in her entire life. (It goes without saying that solitary instance was whispered to the corgis in the deep, dark of night.)
Kate’s letter is also one that can be read as offering a glimmer of hope to a certain man who finds himself facing his sixth Christmas far away from anything like his family or a figgy pudding. (Gluten? In this economy?)
This Friday UK time will see the Princess of Wales appear in public to host her fourth
Together At Christmas carol concert at Westminster Abbey, with guests including a terminally ill Olympian, the families of the three little girls murdered in Britain in July during a Taylor Swift dance class and other survivors of the tragedy.
The princess’ Together concert has become an annual highlight of the palace calendar, a
heartwarming, joy-filled showing of undiluted royal togetherness and unity. Cousins and second cousins and even third ones without even a whisper of a title to their name turn up to belt out a few Rudolphy numbers and to show their support for Kate.
Ahead of this, the Princess of Wales has released an unprecedented and lengthy personal message to people who will attend smaller, community carol services and it is quite remarkably heavy on the feelings, understandable given the “brutal” year, as Prince William put it, the family has had.
Which is to say, her words carry even more weight now than ever.
In the letter, the princess writes that “stopping” and stepping away from “the pressures of daily life” means “that we [can] find the space to live our lives with an open heart, with love, kindness and forgiveness”.
Kate talks about “just how much we need each other in spite of our differences”, “the importance of giving and receiving empathy” and “love that is forgiving”.
“It is this love which is the greatest gift we can receive…We all have something we can offer one another. Gentle words or a receptive ear, an arm around an exhausted shoulder, or silently being by someone’s side.”
They are words that make perfect sense after a year that has seen political upheaval rock the UK, the US and unthinkable suffering and war on horribly, daily display – and they are also words that carry a certain second meaning given the Windsors’ years of family tumult, finger-pointing and TV tears.
Given what the princess has gone through over the last 12 months, how could she not have been doing a hell of a lot of soul searching and deep thinking? Illness brings with it not only fear and loneliness but also a rapid shifting of priorities and old situations coming into new focus. You have to wonder, might the Kate of Christmas 2024 be a softer, more open one than the Kate who made the walk to church on December 25 last year?
Because come this year’s merry royal procession to St Mary Magdalene on the Sandringham
Estate, there will be, as there has been for six years now, one very obvious face missing – that of Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex.
There are others too – in another universe his wife Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex and even their children Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet would feature heavily, all them taking part in a tradition that is as ingrained in the fabric of royal life as pheasant and light xenophobia.
However, 2018 was the last year that the Sussexes took part in a royal Christmas and only the second time the duchess did, the couple having been on their Canadian holiday in 2019
and then soaking up all the ‘freedom’ of their West Coast US lives since then, freedom that has left them with honking great security bills and regular collisions with lurking paps.
Even if we have gotten used to the look of today’s royal family which will be out and on display in only a few short weeks, a version that sees the Waleses’ starring, King Charles and
Queen Camilla Putting On A Good Show and with various Tindalls and Philips and Yorks bringing up the rear, Harry’s shadow indisputably still hangs over proceedings.
His absence is a wound that has scabbed over but never fully healed. Nor, arguably, will it ever really.
Interestingly, Kate’s “love” letter comes at a time when there are signals from Harry’s camp that he wants to get about fixing some fences and to reconnect with his family.
This week, a friend of the duke told People that nothing “would give [Harry] more happiness than being able to rekindle his bond with his father. At the end of the day, you can’t undo bloodlines.”
(Let us note the use of “bloodlines,” which sounds more like how you would describe a good gelding rather than a human man with wants, needs, and his very own yoghurt maker.)
Anywho, between Kate suddenly getting very into “love” and Harry’s keenness to do some moderate to heavy ‘rekindling’, could we see something shift in the new year? Might the fire and ice story of Megxit be about to simmer down and become one of a slow reheating of
London-Montecito relations like a sort of microwavable mending of ties?
Stranger, weirder and wilder things have happened, like the woman Diana dubbed ‘The
Rottweiler’ now sitting on the throne and the King’s son now earning a crust making what is, let’s be honest, reality TV about his horsey friends.
Really what Kate’s letter boils down to is a message of hope and really, we could all do with a heavy, healthy dose of that right now couldn’t we? Especially if you live in California.
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 Personal Kate Middleton ‘love’ letter is released ahead of a massive royal family gathering
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