Photo reveals Kate’s dangerous coronation move
The Princess of Wales came close to stealing the show at this weekend’s coronation – and that could cause a big headache.
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As King Charles and Queen Camilla made their way to Westminster Abbey on Saturday for their coronation in a gold carriage, there was one moment when I hoped His Majesty looked out the window.
As the procession passed Trafalgar Square came the heavy-on-the-symbolism moment when Charles III passed the statue of Charles I, who in 1649 was beheaded for treason.
Even though our King did not look like he had the bandwidth for profound life lessons at that moment, and the Queen looked as if she had regretted that quadruple gin stiffener, here’s hoping at some point he contemplates the takeaway.
That is: Just because you are King, it does not mean you stay on top.
However, for Charles it’s not a rabble-rousing parliament that poses a possible threat.
Oh no. It’s his stunner of a daughter-in-law Kate, the Princess of Wales.
Today, with the bunting packed away and Princess Anne having recovered from her hangover (three glasses of claret and six B-52 shots! I tell you, she’s a goer), what is clear is that even though it was Their Majesties big day, really, it was the Wales show.
At the end of the final innings, with play over and some other sporting terms I don’t know, the ultimate winners who smashed it out of the park (oh, I did have one more in me) were the prince and most especially the princess.
And this puts Kate on some thin ice.
The 41-year-old stepped into the Abbey wearing an Alexander McQueen dress and headpiece that was a truly stunning bit of fashion theatre. She looked like an ancient Greek goddess, or the sort of figure who could rally troops to her cause or who should be standing on some medieval battlefield, sword held aloft.
What she really looked like was a Queen.
For Kate, accidentally usurping Charles from pole public position after he’s waited his whole life to accede to the throne is a risky place to be in.
It is at this point I wonder, is there a red light on a 60s style rotary phone flashing somewhere in the bowels of Clarence House?
For Kate, William, Charles and Camilla, the months and years to come will be the sort of balancing act that would make Cirque du Soleil think about getting a bigger net. Fundamentally, they all have one job – keep the monarchy’s lights on and keep public support for the institution at such a level that Rishi Sunak doesn’t start drawing up plans to subdivide Buckingham Palace’s 39-acre garden.
And to do this, they are all going to have to pull together and put on a unified, united front.
Think sleeves rolled up as they, plus the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh, Princess Anne and those couple of extra elderly dukes they sometimes wheel out, spreading out across the UK and waging a vigorous campaign of popularity boosting.
Think of it as a battle for hearts, minds and viral selfies.
Except, royalty is not a team sport but an outfit defined by rigid hierarchy. At the end of the day, there is only one person who matters, or is meant to matter, and that’s the bloke who’s allowed to keep the Orb of State on his bedside table next to the Collected Works of Spike Milligan and his mouthguard.
The risk Kate is currently running is of over-performing and over-delivering, of being too good at her job and thereby outshining her father-in-law.
Because Charles is a man who would seem to be highly sensitive when it comes to being the star of the show. Added to which, His Majesty also has a track record of having a hard time with a Princess of Wales overshadowing him in terms of public affection and interest.
Even way back in the 80s, biographer Penny Junor described his woes saying, “still he battles on, carrying his bruised and fragile ego into another minefield of controversy.”
Early on in Diana and Charles’ marriage, after having been the main drawcard and attraction his whole life thus far, Charles suddenly faced being swiftly supplanted as the HRH the public wanted to see. A witness told royal biographer Tina Brown that this was strarkly apparent during a 1981 trip to Wales, when the crowd moaned in disappointment every time Diana swapped places with Charles to greet other well-wishers.
Photographer Jayne Fincher who was covering that same event told Brown that Charles would look crestfallen and that “It would be really embarrassing. On the other side of the road they’d all be going ‘Oh no!’ because they’d got him. He’d just turn around and say, ‘I’m really sorry, she’ll be here in a minute.’”
When Charles later went off to give a speech without Diana, the press entirely ignored it.
What is clear is that one of the many factors that contributed to the Wales’ marriage falling apart was him not being left in the shade while a glamorous princess dazzled the masses.
Might this already be something of a sticking point? A bad case of déjà vu that someone is trying to head off?
One of the few surprising moments on Saturday came when the royal family (well, the remaining working number) took to the Palace balcony to do their constitutional duty: smile and wave. The last time the House of Windsor was out there, during Her late Majesty’s Platinum Jubilee partay last year, the Wales famille was smackbang in the centre of things, right next to Queen Elizabeth and Camilla and Charles:
Likewise Trooping the Colour, which had taken place only days before. And again, a similar arrangement at the same outing in 2019, the last time they were all out there:
Except after the coronation, William and Kate stepped out onto the balcony via an outer door and took places quite a way away from the King and Queen.
Maybe this was because there were the eight pages who needed to be fitted in … or maybe it was because some courtier or even canny monarch worked out that this way they would not have to share the same shot as William and Kate.
It is only in the widest shots of the full balcony that includes both William and Kate and Charles, all of which could be a complete coincidence or … a very carefully orchestrated ‘not’.
(Another theory: They wanted to pad out the balcony and stretched the pages out on purpose.)
In all of this, it’s worth keeping in mind that in Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex’s memoir Spare he said that one of his father’s aides threw him “right under the bus,” in part to help “bolster the sagging reputation of Pa.”
Which is to say, don’t overlook the potentially mercenary quality of royalty.
So today, with the royal family, the Windsor Grey horses and a very tired press pack having made it to the other side of the coronation, it’s indisputabl that Kate’s star is only shining brighter, something that could pose a danger to a King with only a very limited time to make his mark.
The princess, no stranger to the royal game, will have to tread particularly carefully.
Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.
Originally published as Photo reveals Kate’s dangerous coronation move
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