‘Out of the darkness’: Kate’s glossy film shows the Princess of Wales is back in the driver’s seat
Catherine’s three-minute video has all the production qualities of a Hollywood movie trailer. Yet there’s nothing confected about the affection between the family. The way they interact shows Kate at her most private and genuine.
As palace videos go, it is perhaps the most intimate portrayal of royal family life since the late Queen invited a fly-on-the-wall documentary crew into her home in 1969.
Back then, the Queen’s decision caused a sensation. Here was the royal family as you had never seen them before; eating breakfast, having barbecues. They’re just like us after all!
Others took the view of the eminent Victorian thinker Walter Bagehot, who in his 1867 seminal work The English Constitution stressed the importance of retaining the mystery of the royal family to ensure its enduring appeal. “We must not let in daylight upon magic,” he warned.
Here, in a three-minute video that has all the production qualities of a Hollywood movie trailer, the Princess of Wales has managed to combine both the daylight and the magic with startling effect.
The video itself is one for the Instagram generation rather than an access-all-areas documentary. The card game they’re playing doesn’t end in tears with one child storming out, Louis doesn’t fall out of the tree he’s climbing and the ancient Land Rover Kate is driving doesn’t get a puncture.
Yet there’s nothing confected about the affection between the family. The way they interact shows Kate at her most private and most genuine. She hugs the children, kisses their little blond heads and lies on the ground with her husband as they relax on a day out. We also see a cameo from her parents, Carole and Michael Middleton, who for years have been supporting actors in the background. It was to the Middletons’ home that Kate and William went after the birth of Prince George and in recent months they have played a large part in Kate’s recovery.
There is, however, only one star of this show. When Kate released a video in March to acknowledge her cancer diagnosis, she sat on a bench in Windsor looking frail but with an inward strength.
Here, she takes centre stage again. In an unusual move, Kensington Palace declined to issue any comment to go alongside the update about the princess’s health. The decision was deliberate, to allow Kate to speak for herself. As the video showed: she’s the one in the driving seat.
William knows that he needs to maintain his relationship with the public on his path to kingship and appears prepared to give a little more of himself in the process. It hasn’t always been easy.
Earlier this year, William showed himself to be a good sport by posting a selfie of him and the children with Taylor Swift at Wembley Stadium on his social media channels.
This is a shift for a couple who have fought to protect their family’s privacy at every stage. It still means that the cameras can only come so far and we can only learn so much. The princess has not revealed, for example, why she needed major abdominal surgery in January or what type of cancer was diagnosed. Many people will believe that this is just as it should be.
Their repeated message, in all the work they do, is one of hope and optimism. Here, for the first time since her diagnosis, Kate was able to deliver such a message.
Her final words say it all: “Out of darkness can come light, so let that light shine bright.”
That’s certainly one in the eye to Bagehot.
