Kate Middleton’s genius move everyone missed amid Sussex drama
Everyone has missed the one plan Kate Middleton sticks to – even during the biggest royal dramas. And it’s served her well so far.
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Towards the end of the nearly six-hour endurance feat that was watching Harry & Meghan – after having sat through a stream of photos and videos of Meghan, Duchess of Sussex walking, hiking, playing with her kids, phone calling, hugging, dancing, gardening, cuddling dogs, watching TV, eating dinner, and on a private jet – it hit me.
Kate, Princess of Wales, just might be a genius.
We’d already seen inside two kitchens, two wardrobes, a number of bathrooms, Meghan and husband Prince Harry’s borrowed Vancouver Island house, Kensington Palace’s Nottingham Cottage, Windsor’s Frogmore Cottage, Tyler Perry’s Los Angeles estate, and their own Montecito mansion – including son Archie and daughter Lilibet’s bedrooms. We even got a glimpse inside Buckingham Palace.
Back to the genius status of Kate, Princess of Wales. I say this, not because she has mastered the perfect bouncy blow dry or because she managed to position herself such that she will be the first commoner since Catherine Parr in 1533 to end up on the throne. Oh no.
The shrewdest tactic that largely goes unremarked upon? The long game that the Princess has been playing that no one talks about?
Her silence.
Because, what do we actually know about Kate? That’s not a trick question. Think about it, take away who she is married to, the fact she has three cute kidlets, a middling degree in art history and the world’s largest collection (I’m guessing) of useless clutch handbags, what do we know about the woman inside all those Emilia Wickstead frocks?
We don’t know what books she reads, TV she watches or what her favourite colour might be. We don’t know her hopes, fears, dreams; we don’t know if likes to cook, who her best friend is and what she does in her spare time. (Macrames blankets? Gets lost in crypto Reddit threads? Hunts willing staff with a paintball gun?)
Nor do we know about her first date with husband Prince William, or the nitty gritty details of his proposal. We have never seen videos of her sobbing, and we don’t know a single thing about the emotional fluctuations inside her marriage to Prince William.
She is a mystery, wrapped in a riddle, wearing a nice Zara top.
Despite more than a decade in the spotlight and despite the fact she will be the next Queen of Britain, she is basically a blank slate. That level of Easter Island-worthy inscrutability is nothing short of extraordinary given that she would have to be one of the most recognisable people on the planet.
And that, I would wager, is by design.
The fact that the Princess of Wales is terra incognita even now is a remarkable achievement in a time when fame generally translates to a certain expectation to serve oneself up, warts and all. (Authenticity rules okay?).
The contrast between her and Meghan could not be more Grand Canyon-esque. It took Kate five years as a member of the royal family to give her first solo TV interview and even then it was only for a documentary about Queen Elizabeth where she revealed a shocking amount of nothing about herself.
Kate has only ever done one magazine cover – British Vogue for its 100th anniversary in 2016 – with no real associated interview.
Meghan, in the past four months, has managed two magazine articles, a six-part TV series and a podcast that was a hodgepodge of Gender Studies 101, West Coast guff and her telling stories about herself.
Sure, we could get into the ‘why’ here; that the Duchess of Sussex is the standard bearer for a culture that views sharing every emotional twinge and thought as a moral imperative – while the Princess seemingly embodies something of an antiquarian British personal constipation.
But instead, I think the question of repercussions, of where these two paths could lead, is much more interesting.
Kate, to my mind, would seem to understand that there is incredible power in silence, a lesson she just might have picked up from her late grandmother-in-law, who managed to go 70 years without ever once giving a print interview, even when Heat magazine asked nicely.
The result? When Kate speaks, the world listens, wrapt, as she generally says something about her Early Childhood Foundation work or mental health or her own children.
Sure, what comes out of her mouth is generally about as exciting as a soggy vegan scotch egg but information about Kate is rationed with such frugality that any smidge of an insight into her as a person is greedily lapped up by the public and the press.
Someone, somewhere inside Kensington Palace understands not only that as a future Queen a certain amount of mystery is required to shore up the mythical quality to the monarchy but that maintaining Kate’s rarity value is crucial too.
Meghan and husband Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, have clearly opted to go in the diametrically opposite direction, having made the decision to make their living by baring their souls on the reg.
After having now sat through all six episodes of their eponymous Netflix documentary, a feat that was a test of my emotional mettle and gag reflex at times, any sense of mystery is gone.
The Sussexes, post their Netflix outpouring, have splayed open their lives, marriage and inner world for subscribers, and the mystery is long, long gone.
That way, danger may well lie for the duo.
What happens to their money-making ability when the thrill for audiences of being granted entrée into their private lives and their home has lost the novelty factor? When our curiosity is sated and we are sick of endless giddy home videos of them running barefoot along a beach that look and feel like an erectile dysfunction drug ad?
Right now, with their documentary having finally landed, the Sussexes are everywhere – splashed across every news site, newspaper, magazine, tabloid, broadsheet, and two-bit blog. They are an inescapable force in the Zeitgeist right now, a fact that is unlikely to change given that Harry’s memoir is out in the early new year.
Prepare yourself for a publicity campaign that could include, according to The Mirror, the Duke sitting down for a prime time TV special – yes, another one – to promote the snippily titled Spare.
The thing is, there has to come a tipping point, a point at which this sort of frenzied global coverage goes from money-can’t-buy exposure to worrying ubiquity territory – a ubiquity that could threaten their ability to keep snagging mammoth commercial deals.
After all, you know what they say about familiarity and contempt.
So have we been treated to the last smartphone-captured moment from Planet Sussex? Only Netflix knows the answer.
Another episode of the Kate approach? You can let your imagination run wild. Now, who else thinks the Princess could be a closet larper?
Daniela Elser is a royal expert and freelance writer with 15 years’ experience who has written for some of Australia’s best print and digital media brands.
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