‘History-making stuff’: New polo photos reveal William and Kate’s major difference
New photos of the Prince and Princess of Wales enjoying a day out have revealed a truly gamechanging sign of things to come.
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You can’t talk about the history of the royal family without talking about polo.
In 1980 it was at the polo that venerable royal photographer Arthur Edwards spotted a new gal in Prince Charles’ orbit and flagged it with The Sun’s newsdesk – and 11 months later, she became the Princess of Wales.
It was at the polo that Diana and the then-Camilla Parker Bowles were photographed together for the first and only time.
In 1992, serious cracks in the Wales union were put on full, embarrassing show when the princess blatantly snubbed Charles’ attempt to give her a peck on the cheek.
It was Kate Middleton and Chelsea Davy’s turn in 2006 when they turned up to watch their princely boyfriends play a charity chukka or two, thus dialling up to 11 the speculation that engagements were imminent.
Fast forward to 2019, and wouldn’t you know it, it was while watching the sport of kings that photos of Kate, now a veteran duchess, and her newish HRH sister-in-law Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex came out, in which they very obviously failed to talk to one another.
So if I tell you that last week, William and Kate, the Prince and Princess of Wales have been at the polo, I bet you can guess where I’m going here. Out came a trove of new photos of the couple and out came something new about them.
They like each other.
They really, truly like each other – and that puts us in unprecedented, someone-ring-the-national-archives territory.
I’m not being factious, this is history-making stuff.
Just think about it. Go back through a millennium of kings and queens, and there are very, very few couples who truly got along and liked one another. Marriages were based on 101 things from power, to politics, to quelling religious tensions, to that pesky heir-begetting business, to money, to property, or sometimes to a pick’n’mix of the above. (Or in the case of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, because he was gagging to get her knickers off and she wanted a crown badly).
Love, affection and trust were never factored into the equation; a decent chin, child-bearing hips, some Habsburg DNA and a dowry that included stolen bits of India were.
The most obvious exception to this was Queen Victoria and her Teutonic bit of all right, Prince Albert. (There is a very particular reason that they ended up with nine children. Anyone want to take a guess?)
However, Valbert, the Brangelina of the corset era, never had something that William and Kate are already enjoying – a partnership inside and outside of any given palace.
When the Waleses become Their Majesties and have to factor posing for stamps into their schedules, they will be the first king and queen, I reckon ever, whose relationship is one of partners. Of equals.
While it will only be William who is secretively dribbled with holy oil come his coronation, and while he will be the only one who will be the monarch, I think that when the duo assume their thrones, they will be the first couple who will ultimately wield equal amounts of power.
For all the pedants out there, I know of course that only William will be the one able to formally open parliament or sign bills into law (get those hand callisthenics in now, Your Highness) but in terms of the royal family as a brand, an institution, an outfit trying to make the UK and the world a better place, and public opinion, they will be truly on an equal footing.
The accession of William and Mary of Orange in 1689 saw the first and only co-reign in British history, with them crowned jointly and both serving as monarchs. Crowned jointly.
With the advent of King William V and Queen Catherine, we could be about to get another co-reign in every practical way.
When William accedes, unlike the dozens and dozens of regal other halves before her, Kate won’t be an adjunct who pretties up a room and is a dab hand at entertaining tedious foreign trade delegations.
Rather, the model that the Waleses are building now, the groundwork they have begun to firmly lay in the last few years, is one where they both have key areas of focus and work and are pursuing both of them with equal vigour, dedication and most importantly, money.
For him, it’s ending homelessness and finding solutions to the climate crisis; for her, changing the way that children are raised between pregnancy and age five with a view to dramatically reduce mental health issues and addiction in generations to come.
From what we have seen so far, there is every indication that William and Kate will continue to follow these twin paths with equal (there’s that word again) resources and the oomph of their Royal Foundation behind them.
If we assume this MO continues in the decades to come when they gloomily have to plan their move to Buckingham Palace, a draughty, unheated mausoleum that no one with an HRH reportedly wants to live in, it will, again, be a case for the history books.
Unlike the 50-odd kings who have come before William, when it’s his turn, we are not going to get one who goes about the grand business of ruling with all of the dick-swinging energy of yore while his wife goes off to politely open a hospital wing.
Oh no. I think we are going to see Their Majesties wake up, enjoy nutritious breakfasts that won’t involve a fried slice, done up in their matching mid-priced blazers, before they both head off for a day of nation-shaping and future-building. (And if their evenings were to involve Love Island, a purloined bottle of Romanée-Conti from the Palace cellars, well, we wouldn’t judge them now, would we?)
What the UK will get with William and Kate on the throne is a regal double-act that gives the British people a two-for-the-price-of-one deal.
Just call them the BOGOFs of monarchy.
And that could and mostly likely would be a real gamechanger.
While royal consorts have traditionally done varying degrees of work, from the insipid nothing of grade-A chaise-lounge loller Queen Caroline to Prince Philip’s active role in the launch of the World Wildlife Fund, William and Kate will both go into their next roles with full workloads, commitments and decades-long projects to oversee.
Her work, assuming things stay the way they are, will never be seen or treated as lesser than his, which is a huge whopper of a bloody great first.
And all of this will be going on for a couple that genuinely adore one another and have not simply been forced into some marital alliance to calm down the French or whatnot.
Freud had the idea that the two things a person really needs to be happy are love and work, and William and Kate, when they step up in the years to come, may well be the only two kings and queens in the sweep of British history who can lay claim to both.
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.
Originally published as ‘History-making stuff’: New polo photos reveal William and Kate’s major difference
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