New Kate photo confirms big win after racist book row
The Princess of Wales has appeared with King Charles for the first time since the royal race row exploded last week.
What are the prerequisites for Queendom? I’m so glad you asked.
Off the top of my head: Minimum reluctance to heir and spare propagation, strong wrist torque (the waving) and the ability to keep one’s powder dry and Get On with things.
For 460 years, English Kings (and the very occasional Queen) maintained the belief that they were the rightful rulers of France. Off they would go to have a chivalric tilt at Paris, leaving their wives back in London to hold down the fort. Which is to say, for centuries, Queens have been Getting On with things, nevermind their husbands’ mad fancies.
If there was ever any doubt that Kate, the Princess of Wales and next Queen, might have this sort of pluck and fortitude, then step right up.
On Tuesday night, the princess donned enough sequins to risk retina damage for the white tie Diplomatic Reception at Buckingham Palace, the first time she and King Charles have attended an event together since the furore over Omid Scobie’s Endgame erupted.
Kate’s ensemble might have been a tad Showgirls-on-the-Thames but if becoming Queen required a job application, then the events of the last week would constitute a doozy of a submission.
Is she ‘racist’? Did the princess speculate about her unborn nephew Prince Archie’s skin colour? What was actually said, specifically when, where and how? We don’t know – the true details of whatever transpired are likely only known to those inside the inner sanctum of The Firm.
What we do know is how the princess has just sailed through these very choppy waters, proving her mettle and making her look even more like she has what it takes to follow in the footsteps of the dozens of Queens who came before her.
Things started in late November when Endgame debuted, wheeling out a predictable homebrand variety of Kate fault-finding: Her as inert, shying away from hard work and perpetual Palace pushover, who, when faced with the arrival of the confident, charismatic Meghan Markle, responded by going the full Mean Girls, not once dispensing the hand of friendship or a comforting glass of ice-cold Whispering Angel.
Unflattering stuff, but not exactly any sort of smoking gun.
But this was only the beginning. Then came the revelation that somehow the Dutch version of Endgame named her and King Charles as the members of the royal family who had expressed the “concerns” about “how dark” Prince Archie might be, as raised by Harry and Meghan during their Oprah Winfrey interview.
Cue all hell breaking loose.
Fleet Street responded by rallying behind Kate in a verging-on-the-jingoistic display of front page buttressing, while social media has devolved into partisan vitriol and Buckingham Palace is yet to utter a single syllable.
And Kate? What of her, the tenth Princess of Wales since Edward I nicked the title from Llywelyn the Last? (Talk about a spoiler alert of a name.)
She has displayed such sangfroid throughout this crisis, I think she’s got it in her to be put in charge of a mid-size carrier group.
As all of this was breaking, Kate has had no choice but to be out in public and to do some top-notch princessing for the cameras.
First. she and husband Prince William, the Prince of Wales met with Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden and her husband Prince Daniel (the world’s first and only former gym owner elevated to royalty) at the Palace in a display of pan-European heirs-to-thrones camaraderie.
Then, that night, the foursome were at the Royal Albert Hall for the annual Royal Variety Performance where Kate’s much, much improved wardrobe of the last couple of years was on impressive display, wearing a customised Safiyaa gown with deliciously dramatic sleeves. Even as the Waleses were entering the Hall, with a reporter yelling questions about the racism storm, Kate appeared unruffled and unfazed.
On Tuesday, when the mother-of-three went to a London hospital’s children’s day surgery unit she sailed through the outing looking as serene and unbothered as someone coming off the back of an extended Buddhist retreat, not having been mired in a potential PR nightmare.
Then, the same day, the Diplomatic Reception, an annual outing that sees Kate gussied up to the nines and willingly playing Princess Barbie.
What is so fascinating is the reception she has gotten throughout all of this. The reaction from the public, as best as it is possible to gauge, is not one of swift condemnation or a sudden precipitous drop-off in support. In fact, the opposite seems to have happened, with certain quarters perhaps now wondering if the Pope accepts unsolicited nominations for sainthoods.
That is, her handling of this crisis has seen her bring to bear some of the late Queen’s core precepts – of dignity, of poise and at all times demonstrating a titanium backbone.
To those already disposed to think that Kate is tremendous stuff, her silence in the face of the ‘Scobie shambles’ has only endeared her further.
What Endgame has done, I’d wager, is to only entrench views. For those who already view Kate as a bitchy actor in the Meghan story, a woman who demonstrated malice and jealousy during the Sussex chapter, Scobie’s allegations only serve as further confirmation of how rotten she is.
And those who see the Sussexes and their supporters as perpetually slinging mud at Our Lady of the Blessed Burberry suits, a woman whose halo is so firmly welded on she could be caught running a Windsor protection racket and would still be given a free pass, will have their view reinforced too.
For these people, what the ten days’ events have done is once and for all cement the Princess of Wales as having What It Takes to be Queen: The grit, the gumption and the sheer willpower to get up and keep going in the face of adversity.
It has also demonstrated her absorption of what seems like a particularly British concept of silence as a virtue; a refusal to submit to any sort of public display of emotion or reaction as valorous.
Notably, this stands in contrast to her having taken a leading role, according to Valentine Low’s Courtiers, in backing the royal family’s response to the Sussexes’ Oprah revelations, having reportedly pushed for the inclusion of the line “recollections may vary”.
Interestingly, even though Scobie has managed to trigger a global storm, he has not managed to translate that into sales. Low, via X (formerly Twitter) has revealed that Courtiers outsold Endgame in its first week in the UK. (6,520 copies versus 6,448.)
Meanwhile, in the US, it is not in Amazon’s top 100 bestsellers, though the handy The Great Disappearance: 31 Ways to be Rapture Ready is.
At the time of writing, I’ve got no information to hand about when The Rapture might be starting but Kate’s ascent to Queendom? We’re already well on the way, people.
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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