Honeymoon habit Prince William and Kate Middleton have lost
When the Prince and Princess of Wales were newlyweds they did one thing that seems to have been left behind more recently.
COMMENT
Give a member of the British royal family a hunting rifle or a broadsword or the neglected wife of a gouty northern duke and golly gosh, they can cut a dash.
But a honeymoon? That wonderful bit of post-marriage feeling, all connubial bliss and confetti still in your knickers? The Windsors are truly rotten.
The late Queen and Prince Philip spent theirs with his uncle; Diana, Princess of Wales spent hers coming to the cymbal-crashing realisation her new groom was mooning over another woman; and only days after Prince William and Kate the Princess of Wales’s wedding of the century, she was pushing a shopping trolley at their local Welsh Waitrose while wearing a shawl. Sheesh you crazy kids, you.
Then, only eight weeks after becoming the Duchess of the Dairy Aisle, Kate and her hubby, to just really keep the nuptial glow going, packed up the RAF jet with 15 staff members, you know, bare bones stuff, and flew to North America for her debut royal tour.
That trip, when the now princess was still getting used to the staff at her local Pret curtsying to her, would set the tone for the years that would follow. Off and off the couple would go again and again, to Bhutan, Jordan, Malaysia, Pakistan, India, Poland, Germany and Denmark, to name only some.
But all stories need a twist, because then something changed markedly. What the hell has happened to the Wales’s worldwide wanderings?
It is now more than 24 months since the prince and princess and their trusty aides bought out Boots’ supply of 30+ SPF for their last tour, their ill-fated Caribbean visit, a trip that definitively proved no aide should ever again plan an engagement again that required them to demonstrate rhythm.
2024 looked to see them hit the road again, sort of, with them set to do a “short” official visit to Italy, but the universe clearly had other plans. Currently the princess is undergoing preventive chemotherapy and ignoring Princess Anne’s suggestion she pops around with a filly to do some DIY equine therapy.
However, even if this Roman tour had come to pass, we are only talking about a days-long quicky and to continental Europe, not the sort of larger format, longer and further afield exercises that other members of the royal family take. For example, this year alone Anne has been to Sri Lanka and is about to go to Canada, Prince Edward has been to Australia, South Africa and St Helena, and post-pandemic, Sophie the Duchess of Edinburgh has been to Iraq and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Even King Charles and Queen Camilla (who hates flying) had been slated to travel to Samoa in October for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting before embarking on a three-week tour of Fiji, New Zealand and Australia before the King’s cancer intervened. (Planning is still going on for the Oz visit, according to the Telegraph, with a source saying, “If he is able to go, of course he will go. Plans continue but there are no guarantees, we are still a long way off.”)
Thus, what gives with the Wales? Somehow, over the last two years, going out and charming the farthest flung parts of the globe that a courtier can find on their office’s 19th-century freestanding globe have totally fallen off the there to-do list. (‘Oooh, how about Prussia?’)
If the couple is a little tour-shy, well, they did make a real hash of that last one in March 2022. They flew off to the Caribbean seemingly expecting nothing more arduous than adulation from flag-waving schoolchildren and instead came face-to-face with the ghosts of colonialism and the question of slavery reparations and republicanism and looked bewildered.
During that trip, they managed to do the most damage a member of the royal family has done to Crown Inc while on an overseas jaunt since Uncle Andy popped orrfff to see his good chum Jeffrey in New York.
By the time the Wales were somewhere over the Atlantic flying home in 2022, William was drafting a statement saying that the trip had been an “opportunity to reflect”, the closest he could come to actually writing, ‘we jolly well ballsed this one up. Our bad.’
Still, aren’t you meant to get back on horses, even coming sprawling off?
Since early 2022, the Prince and Princess of Wales have largely stayed on home soil except for occasional dashes, like to Boston for William’s Earthshot Prize the same year and in 2023, travelling to Jordan for a royal wedding and to France to watch some rugby.
Their reticence might be understandable but that doesn’t make it excusable. (Obviously Kate’s current treatment and recovery notwithstanding.)
The carefully-carefully prince and princess might not exactly be champing at the bit to get back out there and on the tour circuit but sorry chaps, it’s the job description – especially when it concerns the 14 other countries for which the prince will one day be the head of state.
What I don’t get is, before the princess’s diagnosis, with the heady whiff of republicanism in the air throughout the remaining realms, shouldn’t William have been fretting? Getting all furrow-browed over the prospect that by the time he gets to wear the St Edward’s crown the most distant bit of land he will rule over will be the Isle of Wight?
Barbados formerly cut ties with the monarchy in 2021 and got themselves a president. In 2022, Andrew Holness, Jamaica’s Prime Minister, told the prince, to his face and in front of cameras they are “moving on”. Belize has a body called the People’s Constitutional Commission focused on continuing the decolonisation process. Australia has an Assistant Minister for the Republic and King Charles will not replace his mother on our $5 banknote.
The auguries are not great, Your Highnesses.
And yet William seems about as troubled by all this as finding out that Kate has ironed military-grade creases into his favourite Aston Villa hoodie.
The Wales have not been to Australia since 2014. (In 2019, the prince made a dash to New Zealand in the wake of the Christchurch mosque attacks.) Even before that hot mess of a Caribbean tour, it had been six years since they had last visited a British realm. (Canada in 2016 for all you sticklers.)
The impression that is becoming harder to shake is, they don’t really seem to care all that hugely about holding together the family of nations that the late Queen was so proud of.
It’s at this point someone will pipe up to start talking about what swell parents the Wales are and how they don’t want to be away from their three young children for weeks on end while they try and shore up the fading vestiges of the empire.
Fair enough. It’s cockle-warming that they are so committed to their family. However, the rest of the world has to manage, somehow, to combine work and raising kids and without the benefit of a full-time staff at their beck and call.
The interesting thing to watch will be what happens once Kate is better and Kensington Palace can resume normal operations. Will we see the couple jet off to do more international charming or will they refuse to venture much further than Aberdeen?
At least the prince and princess can confidently cross California off the list of possible destinations. Though, anyone know if the Austro-Hungarian empire is still a going concern? Asking for someone at Kensington Palace.
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.
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