Kate Middleton’s 29-day disappearance is a big problem for King Charles
The Princess of Wales has done something that is both admirable and problematic – but can King Charles continue to let it happen?
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Most of the perks of being a princess circa 2023 are obvious to even the untrained eye: The multiple, grand homes including a four-storey, 20-room residence on the most expensive street in the world, Kensington Palace Gardens; access to a trove of priceless jewellery you can wear down to Tesco and getting to have a go on the royal helicopter every other Tuesday.
However there is one fringe benefit that the Princess of Wales gets to enjoy that largely goes unnoticed. The holidays.
Sadly, these days, ‘holidays’ for the princess do not translate to lovely jaunts to Caribbean beaches, all azure water and drinks with little umbrellas in them, but instead getaways to places that generally get described as ‘bracing,’ like Cornwall’s Isles of Scilly.
Still, while she may not be living the super-luxe life on a yacht, Kate’s time off equates to that of someone with a never-ending stack of sick notes.
And that would be fine if Kate was just another blow-dried Audi-driving mum who filled her days with yoga, soy lattes and wistfully wondering why she bothered to go to university.
But, obviously she’s not. Along with being the owner of the world’s only thermal bikini (perfect for a dip in a Scottish loch), she also happens to be the next Queen of the United Kingdom with an out-size role in helping shore up the monarchy.
And unfortunately, you can’t squeeze in saving venerable medieval institutions between pilates reformer classes.
This week, Kate returned to work on Wednesday, her first official engagement in 29 days, meeting with a Yale academic in conjunction with her Early Years Foundation before conducting a Foundation meeting at Windsor Castle. Then, on Thursday, she and husband Prince William choofed along to Birmingham to meet people in the arts and creative fields.
Imagine getting the biggest job of your life so far, a job with possibly crushing pressure, and having assumed the mantle of one of the most truly iconic women of the late 20th century, and then proceeding to take four weeks off work.
And yet, that is exactly what Kate has just done.
Even now, she is on track to take off about four months this year, which is nearly 11 weeks, or just shy of three months more than most Brits get.
Now the Wales apologists in the room will be quick to interject here and point out that for years, the Prince and Princess of Wales have routinely taken off British school holidays to spend time with their three tiny HRHs, Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis.
It’s a touching image: The future King and Queen cheerily spending their precious days finger painting and bonding so hard as a family it would make Queen Mary roll over in her grave.
It’s an approach that is entirely understandable given that William arrived at parenthood, like many products of broken homes, resolute in the desire to give his little ’uns nigh-on-idyllic childhoods like Enid Blyton tableaus reworked in Bonpoint.
This is all highly admirable stuff. If George can get to adulthood relatively undamaged and with reasonable psychological health it will make him the first sovereign to do so in … maybe forever.
Truly – spend any time looking at the men and women who have been put on the throne in the last several hundred years and you will encounter a parade of maladjusted, egomaniacal, selfish, unattractive, miserable sorts who loved, in any combination, lavishly spending money, booze, sex and killing small animals with an unnerving degree of alacrity.
So, anything William and Kate can do as parents to avoid this fate for their son and to help their two younger children dodge the usual destiny of spares – lots of moping, plenty of misery and occupying a strange liminal space between the crown and civvy street – then good work you two.
However, the problem is that Kate especially now takes time off her day job so regularly she probably routinely forgets her work computer’s password.
There are 16 weeks of hols in the Lambrook year, the private school that all three wee Waleses started attending after the family moved to a home on the Windsor estate last year.
If the Princess of Wales keeps up the pattern we have seen, of taking lengthy chunks of leave so she can gambol about muddy fields or teach her children the correct way to discipline a footman, then this has the making of a very real problem for her father-in-law and ultimate boss King Charles.
One of the most overused lines about the late Queen was her having once quipped, “I have to be seen to be believed.” While it sounds like the sort of bon mot that would have made her the toast of dinner parties for the horsey set, there is more than a grain of truth to it.
Perhaps the most fundamental thing the royal family has to do is to be seen.
For the House of Windsor to endure, for the monarchy to chug along into the age of flying driverless cars and Justin Bieber as President, then they have to remain a visible and constant presence in the public’s field of vision; fixtures on front pages showing them out and about doing Good Work.
They can’t beetle off to take indulgent time off to loll about on gilt settees in their trackies and to play hide and seek in the Windsor Castle attics. (Let’s hope Louis does not find the bones of one of Queen Victoria’s grandchildren who went missing up there doing exactly the same thing …)
Making this job that much harder is that the royal family has a rapidly dwindling staff of frontline HRHs.
In the past four years, the number of working members of the royal family has dropped from 16 to only 11, thanks to death, disgrace and the desire to live down the road from Oprah. The total number of engagements undertaken by HRHs who officially represent the crown has fallen by almost 40 per cent in the last decade.
The Windsors Inc. are also a rapidly ageing workforce, where nearly 65 per cent of working HRHs are over 70. The Duke of Kent (87 years old) and Princess Alexandra (86 years old) both still undertake occasional official engagements despite being dangerously close to 90.
Charles desperately needs to frame the monarchy as a relevant investment of about $160 million every year in funding that would otherwise go to the government; as a continuing boon to modern Britain, not a moribund curiosity good at attracting American tourists.
But, doing that requires boots – or at least handmade brogues and Gianvitto Rossi pumps – on the ground. It requires the remaining clutch of senior members of the royal family to stream out from London in all directions to ensure there is not a new hospital ward, motorway overpass or badminton court in Britain opened by anyone other than them.
What they can’t do is routinely clock off when it’s half-term and they want to take their kids to the Natural History Museum or to show them that royals-only secret passageway into Harrods.
It’s time for William and Kate, if they want to really play their part in keeping the whole Palace crown business afloat, to resign themselves to the juggle: to somehow striking some sort of rough balance between their careers and their family, you know, like billions of people around the world do every day.
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Fundamentally, they have to be seen – and to be seen doing the hard yards the public expect of them in return for a life of incredible privilege.
Kate might have one of the world’s most exalted titles but it’s a job she cannot do from home or part-time. Pull your finger out Your Highness, pop on a pair of sensible pumps and get out there and open something.
Daniela Elser is a writer and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.
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