Victims in Kate Middleton mess everyone has forgotten
As the Princess of Wales furore shows no signs of dying down, she is reported to be “devastated” about one thing in particular.
COMMENT
Something I think about a lot: Who the hell would want to be the Princess of Wales? The pearls the size of wren’s eggs, the Old Masters, the in-built bedside button that calls for jam roly-poly and the fawning, obsequious public – sure, that’d be nice and all.
But happiness? Peace? A life that is your own? That has never been part of the deal.
Take the last two women who have held the title. In every photo, Mary of Teck looks like a woman who has just been busy sucking lemons and getting a kick out of tormenting lower order staff while Lady Diana Spencer’s elevation to the position doomed her to become one of the most iconically tragic figures of the twentieth century.
Now, the current Princess of Wales finds herself in a horribly, similarly arduous situation, left “devastated”, facing “incredible pressure” and ‘harassment’ as she finds herself at the centre of a global superstorm that in recent days has even sucked in the White House and Kim Kardashian.
In a 2019 interview Meghan the Duchess of Sussex famously said, “Not many people have asked if I’m OK. But it’s a very real thing to be going through behind the scenes.”
But has anyone asked Kate?
I’m not sure, based on new reporting, that the princess qualifies as anywhere near ‘OK’.
For a while there, it had looked like the former Kate Middleton, hockey player, mucker-in-er and a woman who has never had a second glass of lunchtime wine, was immune to the Princess of Wales curse. It seemed like the art history grad turned future Queen had somehow skirted the fate of her Wales forebears, with her beatific smile, her gently-gently, tractable approach to royal rope-learning and innate love of a nice Zara blouse.
Until. Until late February and a cascading series of stuff-ups and ham-handed bungling and terrible timing that have left her where she is today, “going through the hardest time [she and Prince William have] had to go through as a family”.
It can be easy to forget that the princess is indeed flesh and blood and not a totally impervious dolly who gets wound up and trotted out for Trooping the Colour and early learning centre visits to thus keep the proles charmed and supplicant.
The very human cost of the last few weeks’ hysteria and the decision by the five major photo agencies to issue kill notices over the “manipulated” image shared by the Prince and Princess of Wales last weekend have come into view.
Don’t let the image of the princess from her Mother’s Day photo from last week, of a blithely cheery princess insensitive to the scurrilous mutterings of the internet cabal, fool you.
At this juncture the question isn’t, how is Kate doing but how is Kate not curled up in the foetal position being spoon fed CBD oil by a brooding William wondering if he can ask the Ministry of Defence to carry out a quick surgical strike on the TikTok servers?
The princess game clearly requires being made of sterner stuff.
Friends of the Waleses have revealed to the Sunday Times’ royal editor Roya Nikkhah how the Waleses are aware of what is going on.
“They’re not like [Prince] Harry, obsessing and scrolling through Twitter, but they know it has broken through. They follow the news and see the BBC breaking news alerts,” a friend, “who is in close touch with both”, has said.
However, last week, Nikkhah reported that kill notices had left the 42-year-old mother of three “devastated”.
Elsewhere, another friend has told the Daily Beast’s Tom Sykes: “She and William have been under intense stress ever since Harry and Meghan left the family. They spent three years just waiting for the next horrific media interview. On top of that they have moved house, the kids have moved school, the queen died, and she became Princess of Wales. It’s not surprising she got ill, and it’s not surprising she needs a break from it all to get better.”
The friend told Sykes that the strain of the last few turbulent years of royal life have come at a cost and have “triggered a stress-related illness in Kate”.
Another friend told the Beast: “She has been under incredible pressure for several years, and is now being harassed by the media over f*ck-ups made by other people.”
(Erm, pot, kettle, Photoshop?)
More importantly, a largely overlooked piece in this current frenzy: Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis.
A former staffer has told Sykes: “The thing that will be absolutely top of [the Waleses’] minds right now will be the impact this is having on their children. They are very fortunate that other parents at the school are very loyal, but the reality is that keeping this from children these days is an impossible task.”
“These are people with three small children going through the hardest time they’ve had to go through as a family,” as a friend told the Times. “They are trying to keep things as normal as possible for the kids, but it’s not easy.”
The combination of Kate’s sick leave, the recent furore meets mania and the fact that his father King Charles is undergoing cancer treatment has meant that William is being forced to bear up under unprecedented stress. (Sigh. If I was paid every time I had to use the word ‘unprecedented’ over the last few years of writing about the royal family, I would currently be typing this from the aft deck of my superyacht.)
As a handy friend told the Times: “Privately, he’s dealing with more than he has for a long time in his life and it’s tough to see. He is OK, but it is hard.
“He’s just really upset that his wife is having to go through all of this with her recovery, and then having to think about making statements about a family photo.”
Nikkhah reports that “What [William] has found especially challenging in recent weeks … is the feeling that the couple’s bubble is coming under threat, and that his wife is experiencing some of what his mother went through.”
So, I’ll ask my initial question again – who would want this life?
Really, none of what you and I have watched play out in recent weeks should come as that much of a surprise, not the obsession or the mania or the fact that the wellbeing of the Princess of Wales has now reached the White House. (Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has faced questions about whether President Joe Biden is concerned about the princess.)
If you think about it, it’s something of a miracle that the Princess of Wales has had such a straightforward-ish run for so long until about now.
In better news, a “happy, relaxed and healthy” Kate was, according to the Sun, spied over the weekend at a Windsor farm shop along with on the sidelines watching her kids play sport.
Which is very nice. I hope she got to stock up on organic locally-sourced honey and got to watch Louis rugby tackle his way through the under sixes.
But longer term, of princesses and peace? The outlook seems grim. Just ask Diana. Or Mary. Or Alexandra or Caroline or Augusta or Caroline or Catherine or Anne or Joan or Catrin or Margaret or Gwenillian or Elizabeth or Eleanor or Isabella or Joan, all the women united across eight centuries by one title. I wonder how many people ever asked any of them if they’re OK?
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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