Kate Middleton has the last laugh over Meghan Markle
New photos of Kate Middleton along with reports of an uncomfortable Meghan Markle show the mistake Meghan made.
COMMENT
If there is one thing that Kate, the Princess of Wales has mastered with incredible aplomb it is her listening face. In any given year she meets thousands of people at official receptions, walkabouts, preschools, food banks, mums’ groups, sporting events, and probably even while waiting in the self-service line at her local Waitrose.
Yet never once has she ever been caught looking like she is bored or her attention has drifted. There is no debate – the princess is the Lionel Messi of looking, and being, interested in other people.
On Tuesday, we got another excellent round of Kate Doing Active Listening photos as she visited a naval air base in her guise as newbie Commodore-in-Chief, Fleet Air Arm after taking over from disgraced duke and human pudding Prince Andrew.
We were treated to photos of Kate listening while being shown some boring bit of an engine, Kate listening while having to look at a model aircraft, Kate listening while having a go with some headphones, Kate listening while some bloke in a uniform does some explaining. (Dear lord, being a working royal looks like an exercise in tedium …)
But what is really remarkable is not that she seems genuinely interested in all this (or at least can fake it superbly), it is that overall, Kate looks like she was having a ball.
Look no further than the shot of the princess seriously getting the giggles while inflating a lifejacket, images that were nothing short of a gift to newspaper editors’ sweating furiously over the front page back in London.
What has become increasingly apparent when the mother-of-three is in public is just how comfortable she is and how much delight she seems to be taking in her role.
Tuesday’s princess-versus-the-life jacket outing follows the lengthy interview that she and husband Prince William, the Prince of Wales gave to cousin-in-law Mike Tindalls’ podcast The Good, The Bad and The Rugby in their guises as the patrons of English and Welsh rugby respectively.
Kate laughed, chuckled and merrily chit-chatted away for all 50 odd minutes of it, with the episode revealing, among other things that she and William had never “actually managed to finish a game of tennis,” because they are so competitive; that the princess has played beer pong; and that she loves cold water swimming, saying “Personally I love swimming, cold swimming, the colder the better. Slightly to the point where it’s crazy and it’s dark and it’s raining and I’ll go and seek out cold water.”
It was a bit personal, it was fun and it was relaxed, words that a decade ago would never have been associated with Kate generally giving slightly twitchy deer-in-the-headlight vibes. (She often looked like she needed an aide to find her a blocker. Or a triple G & T. Or to crush up the former and add it to the later.)
The pressure on the then Duchess of Cambridge (gosh that feels strange to type) must have been immense and it has taken years for her to go from nervous fawn in a wrap dress to jolly and relaxed blazer-woman while on the job.
Today, nearly a year on exactly since the prince and princess were elevated to their Wales titles, only a heartbeat (or a fishbone or a stumble) away from the throne, Kate has never made her job look quite so easy or like she is having quite so much fun with it.
Unfortunately the same cannot be said for her sister-in-law Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex who has spent much of the past week only a hop, skip and a jump away in Germany after joining Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex for the second half of his wildly successful Invictus Games.
Maybe it was the relative proximity to Blighty and the harrumphing classes but the duchess did not appear to be quite as at ease as during previous outings.
Writing in the Telegraph, the paper’s royal editor Victoria Ward, who was at the Games, said of the duchess: “She is not quite yet in her comfort zone like her husband. She claps enthusiastically and hands out medals with a megawatt smile but is not quite so relaxed.”
Thus we have one of King Charles’ daughters-in-law who looks ever more in her element and completely settled in her public role while the other seems to be struggling with this exact same thing.
I do wonder if part of this might come down to how many hats and roles the 42-year-old has worn in the last five years alone. This time in 2017, Meghan was just only making her public debut with Harry at the Toronto Invictus Games (mind blowing right?) and in the relatively short span of time since then, she has been an actress, a blogger, a working royal, an exiled royal, a podcaster, a documentary-marker and participant, a charity founder, an investor in an organic vegan latte business and an “impact partner” with fintech asset manager Ethic. (She has also moved countries three times, moved house five times, gotten married, changed religion, had a child, had a miscarriage, and had another child.)
On the job front, I’m not sure whether this list reflects the awesome power of the duchess’ chutzpah, energy and her courage to throw herself into new things or a certain readiness to shed professional skins and to move onto the next thing far too often. Or maybe … both, simultaneously?
Meghan (and Harry to a lesser degree) is looking increasingly like a victim of multiple-profession disorder, of trying to have too many fingers in too many pies, too fast and all at the same time, the end result, the misses coming close to outweighing the wins.
Even with the awesome power of cold brew and a real hunger to succeed it is categorically impossible for any person to succeed if they keep lurching from job to job.
If the duchess is experiencing some unease then, no wonder.
For example, whatever happened to the duchess’ 40x40 mentoring initiative launched two years ago on her birthday? It has largely disappeared without a trace like her involvement in pushing for paid parental leave or taking part in any way in the fightback against the overturning of the Roe vs. Wade abortion protections after giving an interview about the Supreme Court’s ruling to Vogue.
There is also the wider fact that the Meghan that the US has gotten to know in recent years is not exactly proving popular, with her most recent approval ratings, from earlier this month, putting her in net negative territory.
If we look at Kate and Meghan right now, the former has built and grown her image and role over the course of a ten years plus while Meghan jumped from guise to role to cause like someone throwing things at a wall to see what sticks.
Her clothing situation during the Games was exemplative of this mutability. At last year’s event, we were presented with a supremely glamorous designer duchess, who wheeled out new bits of Valentino like us mere mortals buy socks at Uniqlo. And this year? We saw Meghan in Zara, Banana Republic, J Crew, with a smattering of upscale pieces along with her trotting out things she already owned.
As Ward reported, “Aides – acutely aware of the focus on the cost of her wardrobe – are at pains to point out how much of her closing is ‘vintage’ or being re-worn. They also note that she is not travelling with a make-up artist or hairdresser.”
(Wow. Imagine that. Having to actually apply your own mascara every day. Brave.)
What this all looks like is that Meghan is still casting around to find a public image slash persona that ‘fits,’ if you will, after a year that has seen her favourability numbers spectacularly tank on both sides of the Atlantic, the Sussexes being regularly and resoundingly mocked by comics and the duo losing their lucrative Spotify gig.
For the time being, Kate is not only having the last, but the only laugh. For now, that is. With Meghan supposedly set to wheel out some new digital enterprise any hot minute and her Instagram relaunch surely a question of when, not if, the tables could be about to turn, tout suite.
If nothing else, the Duchess of Sussex now has 18-months to plan her next wardrobe iteration for the February 2025 Invictus Games in Vancouver. Will it be Goth Meghan? A hippy-dippy duchess? Non-stop Hervé Leger bandage dresses? Maybe someone should star
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.
Meghan’s BFF spills on their friendship
One of Meghan’s closest friends has shared details of their relationship amid a challenging few weeks for the duchess.
Magazine’s savage two-word Meghan diss
The Duchess of Sussex returned to the spotlight this week, and one US publication had something brutal to say about her career.
King’s unexpected call ahead of Aussie tour
King Charles has made a significant personal decision ahead of his high-profile visit to Australia next week.