Kate Middleton exposes huge Prince William double standard
Reaction to the news that Kate Middleton won’t be joining Prince William for a landmark event ignores one important fact.
COMMENT
Numbers are often getting various members of the House of Windsor in trouble: ‘Leave’ days taken (William and Kate, the Prince and Princess of Wales); private jet flights logged (Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex); and full complement of gardeners and maids loudly and boorishly being bollocked (Prince Andrew, the Duke of York).
Now, cold, hard integers are back to land one of the Waleses in hot water.
Next month William, and only William, will board a British Airways flight to spend 13 hours watching the latest Marvel dreck as he heads to Singapore for the third annual outing of his highly successful Earthshot Prize. Someone prime the palace press release pump!
However, for the first time since the $96 million initiative’s inception Kate will not be by his side, pairing a recycled frock with a few priceless baubles, giving us the uniquely royal high/low of Zara and irreplaceable diamonds.
Instead, she will be back home in Berkshire helping their son Prince George bone up on his fractions and Latin declensions for school exams.
Even weeks out, you can already hear a certain low level harrumphing about Kate not doing her duty in flying halfway around the world to stand next to her husband while her signature bouncy coiffeur does battle with the humidity.
And, to be fair, there is plenty of mileage to be had from the fact this Singapore flit will be the third high-profile international trip that William has undertaken without his wife making the trip too, thus doing plenty to revive the old ‘work-shy Kate’ cudgel of old.
But nope, the real kicker here, the bit to get between one’s teeth is the glaring double standard at play.
Since Earthshot kicked off, Kate has proven a dependable supporting player, turning up (until now) at every major project milestone, while William has returned the favour with Kate’s Early Years Foundation by going to only one big event. One.
Grrrr. Gnash your teeth if you fancy because I certainly am.
Royal wives, since Matilda of Scotland married Henry I, have been expected to fulfil two key functions – to pop out an heir or six, what with the Black Death and boar hunting accidents being what they were, and to be ornamental additions to the court.
For centuries, princesses and queens were largely viewed as fragrant addendums to whatever lumpen Edward or Henry they had married, their key duty being to mutely walk several paces behind His Majesty and to turn a blind eye as to how he ended up with ‘the French disease’ (aka syphilis).
All these women were viewed as a cross between broodmare and a pretty sideboard ornament.
Then, thankfully, the 20th century chugged around and that old paradigm was largely shoved into some deep, dark forgotten corner of the Buckingham Palace attics, along with that 1933 home movie showing the Queen Mother delivering a Nazi salute and Princess Margaret’s burn book.
Or at least so I had always figured.
William and Kate, these days, have become essentially philanthropic organisation CEOs of the sort who would otherwise clog up the SXSW stage.
They have resolutely axed the endless stream of ribbon-cuttings and ship-launchings, of spending their days inaugurating community centres in Yorkshire and drinking weak cups of tea with Midlands mayors draped in their clanking regalia.
This has been replaced with them taking much more proactive and engaged positions, creating their own organisations to tackle their particular issues, an arrangement that has given birth to the Royal Foundation (co-founded with Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex) in 2009, Heads Together in 2016 (also with Harry), William’s Earthshot in 2020 and Kate’s Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood in 2021.
On these fronts, William and Kate have steamed ahead with their individual causes, proving that they can both wear suits, convene big names and press-gang billion-dollar businesses to do their philanthropic bidding with the best of them.
Kate has cheerfully turned up to support her future King and his dad coming third in the quail egg and spoon race at their kids’ school.
In 2021, the princess took part, with William, in the Generation Earthshot event at Kew Gardens; she was by his side for the inaugural Earthshot Awards; and then with him for Cop26 where the prince did some urging of world leaders to not let the Earth melt as part of his climate fight.
Then, in 2022, both Waleses visited one of the Earthshot Prize’s first batch of winners during their ill-fated tour of the Caribbean before both the prince and princess made the trip to Boston for a packed three-day visit for the second annual Prize.
In fact, supporting William’s huge green push has been a whole family affair on occasion, with not only Kate but Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis getting in on the act in 2020 during a meeting with Sir David Attenborough.
So, is what is good for the goose, good for the gander?
Hardly.
Since the advent of the Centre for Early Childhood, Kate has appeared solo at: the official launch of the Centre at the London School of Economics in June 2021; during her whirlwind 24-hour mini tour to launch the Shaping Us campaign in January this year; at the March 2023 launch of the Business Taskforce for Early Childhood, and what feels like an endless stream of events where Kate sits on tiny chairs and talks to kids.
The only marquee outing of his wife’s Centre that the prince has ambled along to came in January this year when William attended the launch of Shaping Us, his tie nattily co-ordinating with her killer McQueen suit.
Maybe part of the rationale of sending Kate out sans William was that that would mean she could enjoy the entirety of the spotlight, but I fail to see how the Prince of Wales in supportive husband mode, holding her handbag and poised to proffer lip gloss, would have eroded the attention on the princess.
There are arguments to be made why the Princess of Wales should be going to Singapore, however it sticks in the craw that Kate is expected to trot along to all of her husband’s signature initiatives’ events while he is not held to the same standard.
Thus I repeat, grrr.
Here is a cheerful number to end on: One. That’s the number of cakes that King Charles will allow his chefs to make for he and wife Queen Camilla when they sit down for their daily afternoon tea à deux. This week an insider told the Daily Mail’s Ephraim Hardcastle column that His Majesty “insists on being served slices of the same cake, on successive days, until it is finished.” Crumbs.
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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