Dark meaning in new Kate Middleton sighting
The Princess of Wales has very briefly returned to public, but her outing could only make things more difficult as she battles cancer.
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For a pretty modest and relatively plain grey church in the middle of nowhere in Scotland, Crathie Kirk has provided the backdrop for some of the royal family’s biggest moments. Hours after the death of their mother Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997, Princes William and Harry were made to go and to sit through a service where the minister had been instructed not to make any mention of the unthinkable tragedy that had just befallen the boys. (Not like that might really screw one of them up well and good now would it?)
In 2019, it was to Crathie Kirk that the late Queen took lumpish and shady son Prince Andrew hours after his chum, sex trafficker Jeffrey Esptein, died in a New York jail cell in ahorrendously ill-conceived bit of royal showmanship.
And Crathie Kirk is now the scene for the return of Kate, the Princess of Wales to public view.
Well, for a morning anyway.
In the last 245 days, Kate has officially appeared only twice in person - at Trooping the Colour and at Wimbledon. On Sunday, we got a glorious third. There, arriving at Crathie Kirk, with a depressingly beard-free Prince William behind the wheel, was Kate, along with Prince George, out for a nice bit of early morning god-bothering. (Heathens and atheists, look away now.)
This sighting of Kate immediately led to the UK press putting out breaking news alerts - seriously - and then much general hurrahing and rousing cheering, such a positive sign that she was up to an hour of belting out Jerusalem in the pews! Shall I just come right out with it and start to rain on this parade here and now?
That Kate was up to going along to share a hymn book with William is, of course, all very jolly but there is a downside to moments like this, when we see her doing the things that we previously took for granted. Moments like this not only raise hopes, but speculation and pressure too.
Her church-going is a double-edged sword accessorised in a natty khaki trilby, because appearances can be such deceiving, wily things. These new photos of Kate, looking very normal and healthy too, run counter to how the rest of the year is shaping up.
The royal family generally returns to work in September, ruining their pasty Scottish ‘tans’ to get back to the business of keeping the monarchy afloat, and work up until Christmas Day. This schedule and programming for this autumn / winter ‘term’ is not something cooked up on the fly but would have been locked in earlier in the year. (Chance and spontaneity are not exactly words that exist in the Crown Inc. lexicon. Like ‘sorry about that slavery business’.)
And Kate’s diary for the rest of 2024? Emptier than a Rome hotel’s mini bar after Princess Margaret had popped in to soak up the dolce vita circa 1963. Earlier this month, a source told the Daily Beast’s Tom Sykes: “There is still nothing in her diary. 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.”
In November, William will head to Cape Town for the latest Earthshot Awards and it seems highly unlikely he will be making the trip in any fashion but solo. (And by ‘solo,’ I mean barely making do with just his private secretary, clutch of flunkies, his social media whizzkids, and official shoe shiner and toothpaste squeezers.)
Meanwhile, earlier this year, a friend of the princess told Sykes: “The key thing for her now is avoiding any kind of stress or anxiety and just getting on with the business of getting better.”
However, I’m not sure that week after week of clear pages in a Smythson desk planner necessarily translates to a lack of “stress and anxiety”. Pressure can be an insidious thing, n’est pas?
Like the pressure that the princess might put on herself, given how assiduously she takes her flagship charity projects. In her June statement, she said that she is “starting to do a little work from home.” Or the pressure to help out and shoulder her share of the workload and weight that bears done on Crown Inc with her father-in-law King Charles also doing personal battle with the big ‘C’. The last few years have increasingly seen the words “short-staffed” attached to “Buckingham Palace”.
Only three months after Her late Majesty’s ill-conceived outing to Crathie Kirk with Andrew he was a goner, hoist on the petard of his own d**kheadishness after his infamous Newsnight interview. Then, barely two months later, it was Harry and wife Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Susssex’s turn, their proposed half-baked notion of a sort of-in, sort of-out way of royaling soon meeting a sticky end when it came to the late Queen and her final say. And then came the loss part. The death of Prince Philip in 2021 (though he had retired from service in 2017) and the following year of the late Queen. Over the course of three years, the House of Windsor lost five senior members in quick succession.
There is excess slack and then there is this current royal state of flapping in the wind looking pretty woefully lacking. There is only so many times that Buckingham Palace can send out the ever dutiful and terribly underappreciated Prince Edward and Sophie, the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh.
And this is to say nothing of the public hopes and Britain’s insatiable appetite for as much Kate as they can get, all the time. The King is, you know, the King, but the real star of the Great Big Windsor Spectacular Extraordinaire? Well, we all know who that is and this show has been limping all year doing its best.
Now, with the Waleses back in holiday mode behind the high hedges of Balmoral, who knows when the princess might be spied again. And Crathie Kirk will have to wait another year until it gets its next walk-on role in the royal drama.
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 Dark meaning in new Kate Middleton sighting
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