The Kate Middleton, Princess of Wales takeover is here

The Princess of Wales’ stunning – and brief – return to the spotlight this week has revealed a huge shift.

If you or anyone you know has a crystal ball, a reliable neighbourhood scryer or the number of a halfway decent psychic, I think Buckingham and stall Palaces could do with a quick call. Divining exactly quite what the fates might have in stall for the House of Windsor next would come in very handy right about now. Who could have predicted that, in only the last month, Princess Anne would come far too close for comfort with the wrong end of a horse in a mysterious accident that, three weeks on, has left her face still bruised? Or that King Charles would be involved in a security incident involving Jersey cows and possibly a drone? Or that Kate, the Princess of Wales could become, somehow, bigger?

Catherine, Princess of Wales received a standing ovation when she arrived at Wimbledon. Photo by ANDREJ ISAKOVIC / AFP.

You would have to rewind all the way back to 2003 and Kate’s hipster jeans years to get back to a time when she was not famous and she was not a mononym. I doubt that in the 1,052 weeks or so since she and Prince William were first photographed together a single week has gone by when her face did not peer out at supermarket shoppers from the cover of tabloid mags next to the cash register.

Yet, in 2024, the Princess of Wales has surpassed even that. In fact, I’ve had a busy morning with the calculator and can tell you that the three videos released by Kensington Palace of the princess this year have hit more than 165.8 million views.

Her reappearance on Sunday for the mens’ finals at Wimbledon, only the second time the princess has been seen in public this year, offers us some cold hard proof of this, with the outing triggering a wild response on social media. 41 million – that’s the number of times that the videos of Kate at the tournament shared by the official Wimbledon and Kensington Palace Instagram accounts have been viewed. Add in the numbers from X, formerly Twitter, and the total across both platforms and both accounts is just shy of 50 million views. Now sure, these are not so stratospheric that they would force Kris Jenne to defy the powers of her filler-ed forehead to raise even a single, cursory eyebrow of approval but what they point to is Kate going global in a way that she never has before.

Kate’s appearance at the Trooping the Colour ceremonial parade delighted royal fans around the world. Photo by Chris Jackson/Getty Images.

Oh sure, in years gone by, the US and the world outside of the UK and the Commonwealth cared about royal weddings and babies, the big moments, the sorts of events that would see the commemorative teaspoon industry crank back up. But Kate doing her day job and going to an official thing? Kate going to an event that she has been to 11 times before and at which all she does is sit and then hand over an awkward gold cup? Hardly. In normal times, that’s not getting 50 million views. The ace card here was Princess of Wales’ big comeback in June for Trooping the Colour. This year, the single video released by Kensington Palace of the event was viewed 50.8 million times. While their office didn’t post one last year, the video of the last time that the Wales' were on the Buckingham Palace balcony, for the King’s coronation, got less than half of that, with 22.1 million views.

Here comes the explains bit, because to understand these surging figures you have to step back and take a long view at how spectacularly and unpredictably things have changed for Kate in only five years. Back in 2019, there were intermittent burblings about all not being well between the Wales' and Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Wales. They had split their offices and private lives, the Sussexes’ moving an hour away to Windsor, but by and large Kate was still the slightly opaque cipher she had long been. Her public image was of a sweet, caring, nice girl doing some nice charity work and turning out nice children.

Kate, who has been battling cancer, has recently begun dipping her toe back into public royal life. Photo by Shi Tang/Getty Images.

And then, well, everything happened – Megxit and the pandemic and Oprah Winfrey and Spare and Netflix and Kate launched her own foundation and dramatically ramped up the seriousness of her work. As the princess’ personal and private lives underwent various convulsions and shifts, the world had a front-row seat.

Most obviously, Kate was dumped as one of the front row players in the biggest soap opera in the world. Post Megxit, the Sussexes’ eagerness to ventilate their feelings – and the events that had transpired behind palace gates – brought Kate to life in a way, fleshing her out as an actual person, taking her from being something of a very pretty sphinx to rendering her in colour in a way she had never been before.

As this was happening, that horrid virus that forced us all inside to moon about, marinating in ennui and Uber Eats boxes, was rampaging across the globe and the Wales'’ stepped up. They invited the world inside their Anmer Hall home and did things like calling the bingo via Zoom for pensioners and joking with other parents about the joys of homeschooling. The world started to see an unscripted princess, unmediated and direct, live on Zoom and from their living room. (Or at least a lessor downstairs drawing room, the one with only their second best Reubens.)

Posed perfection was replaced with realness and, courtesy of the Sussexes’ revelations, her being freighted with a cultural resonance and weight she had not previously. In 2021, her launch of The Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood started to add real substance to her image and public standing too. And then came 2024 with a great crashing, cacophonic bang. The first few months of this year were wholly consumed by the utter fruit loopy Kategate madness, the princess suddenly becoming the 21st century’s answer Ameilia Earhart. The Wales'’ Adelaide Cottage became social media’s grassy knoll as much of the world underwent some sort of deserves to be studied collective hallucinatory experience Then with the revelation that Kate has cancer, a moment that demanded even more vehement synonyms than ‘shocking’ being hauled out, the princess took on a certain tragic- yet-brilliantly-brave, heroic quality.

Kate’s public image has come a long way since the beginning of the year, when a media circus surrounded her disappearance from the spotlight. Photo by HENRY NICHOLLS / AFP.

Like her late mother-in-law Diana, Princess of Wales, she has morphed over the years from liked in the UK and Commonwealth, to adored in the UK and Commonwealth, to global celebrity, to mythical figure. Which, I reckon, is how we land at than Kate videos being viewed more 223 million times in 2024 so far. (That is, across official royal and Wimbledon accounts, across X and Instagram and of her cancer announcement, Trooping outing and appearance at the tennis. And it’s worth pointing out here we have not even factored in numbers from TikTok, where Kate and royal content is rife, because none of the royal offices have accounts on the platform.) 223 million times. That number does not speak to cursory interest or mild curiosity but the

Princess of Wales having become an object of pervasive, global fascination to an unprecedented degree. 223 times. The world is indisputably hooked on Kate.

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.