Troubling Princess Kate message in King Charles tour
The King and Queen’s trip to Australia could have significant repercussions for the Princess of Wales – and the Duchess of Sussex too.
The royal rota, the press agencies, palace watchers: All their eyes today are about to be on the unlikeliest of places like a library in Sydney’s formerly industrial heartland (don’t lick the soil, mind the Dan Browns) and a some portable barbeques in a Parramatta park. We’re not in Gloucestershire anymore.
Royal tours are nothing if not exercises in seeing excessively titled people be put in deliciously incongruous places.
But what will be playing out across the city’s south and west, not least some aide tasked with preventing Queen Camilla getting too close to a barbequed snag for propriety’s sake, has much wider implications for two people in particular - the King’s daughters-in-law.
While I lack a crystal ball or even the number of a decent psychic, I’m going to guess that come Wednesday morning when Their Majesties fly out, their trip will likely fall into the ‘win’ column. Smiles will be smiled, locals vaguely mollified, photo opportunities gamely taken.
As Charles and Camilla fully recline their seats and request tandem celebratory triple G & Ts it will be with this trip, probably, having been a reminder of the soft power of royalty and just how far some actual pressing of the flesh can go in terms of selling the monarchy.
That’s a message that could be about to reach Prince William and Kate, the Prince and Princess of Wales in Windsor where he is currently embracing beard-core and she is inching back towards regular princess programming after finishing chemotherapy.
One of the most tediously overused lines from the late Queen has to be, “I have to be seen to be believed” but sadly it’s the most apt one here. For royalty to be successful it requires visibility and presence.
Hear that William and Kate?
The last time that the Waleses’ embarked on a significant multi-stop, whirligig of an overseas tour was in March, 2022 when they headed to the Caribbean to celebrate the late Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. (Yes, it was that long ago.) The job seemed simple: Fly the flag for Gan Gan and give the UK press plenty of shots of HRHs in sunglasses. Instead the duo, naively if not downright ignorantly, flew smackbang into conversations about slavery, republicanism, reparations and the legacy of Britain’s often violent colonial past.
Reader: It was awful. The optics: Abysmal. It’s never a good sign if, after a tour, the royals involved have to put out a statement explaining themselves while they are still airborne.
(Charles and Camilla had their own taste of this when Senator Lidia Thorpe heckled the Palace with her outburst in Parliament House shouting: “You are not our king”.)
Aside from a quickie trip to Boston also in 2022 for William’s Earthshot Prize, a blink and you’ll miss it dash to Jordan for a royal wedding and a day outing to France for rugby, since then Kate has not strayed too far from Peter Jones’ same-day delivery radius. William, meanwhile, has clocked up solo trips to New York, Singapore, Abu Dhabi, Poland, Kuwait, and Germany.
End result: It’s time. (It goes without saying here, all of this is totally dependent on Kate’s health and her feeling fighting fit.) It’s time for them and their staffers and factotums and aides and dressers and security team to pack up shop and to hit the road.
(Also, the prince clearly wants to increase his own global brand footprint too, especially in regards to his Earthshot Prize.)
The success of the King and Queen’s Australian tour should only serve to remind the people paid to care about these things that William and Kate need to get out there and to actually meet the far flung peoples he will one day rule over. There is only so much some Instagram whizbangery can do, only so far a soft-focused video clip of butterflies and hugs can go.
What the success of the King in Australia does is to quietly dial up the pressure on the Waleses to get back out there. Which is to say, 2025 could and arguably should see William and Kate get busy proffering their passports and stocking up on lightweight linen separates.
Which brings us to the King’s son and second daughter-in-law in California. This year has seen them really spread their global wings with self-staged trips to Nigeria, Colombia and Lesotho. (The latter only the duke going.) Clearly they want to up their places as jetsetting, the world-is-not-enough DIY dignitaries.
So, what might it mean for the Sussexes and their international ambitions if the Waleses start suddenly taking flight too? What happens if there is increased pressure on William and Kate to take their palace show on the road at the same moment that Harry and Meghan are pushing to make themselves into fly-in, fly-out royalty?
Already we have seen an odd overlap in William and Harry’s destinations, with the duke in South Africa earlier this month and the prince set to arrive there in a few weeks.
In a poignant bit of symmetry, Charles and Camilla are in Australia nearly six years exactly since the Sussexes, still riding the massive adulatory wave that followed their 2018 wedding, were here. That two week trip was a barnstormer with the duke and duchess pulling in crowds by the thousands and giving us the closest taste of what Beatlemania must have been like.
What emotions must Harry and Meghan be feeling as they watch the King and Queen right now? Relief that they don’t have to pretend to enjoy eating a sausage in bread in a dry, suburban park? Sadness at being reminded about the roles and the reputations and the poisons they could and should occupy in the world? A certain wistfulness that they have ended up with a life where they are having to fight for every inch of their reputations and brands and still earn a crust?
The bottom line: Feelings are about to be felt in three countries, barbies fired up in Sydney, and British journalists parked in the hot sun. There really is nothing like a royal tour.
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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