Low key Kate will be a very modern Princess of Wales

There will never be another Diana, Princess of Wales. But Catherine will stamp her own identity onto one of the most evocative titles in modern royal history.

There will never be another Diana, Princess of Wales. In many people’s hearts, in the mythology of the royal family, the late princess was such a totemic figure that she has achieved a sort of immortality.

There is now, however, another Princess of Wales: Catherine

The death of the Queen means that Prince William is now the heir apparent and 22nd Prince of Wales. That title – reserved for the eldest son of the sovereign – is not bestowed automatically, but is in the gift of the King, and Charles bestowed it on his son during his address to the nation.

He also made it clear Catherine would be Princess of Wales – one of the most evocative titles in modern royal history.

Intimately associated with the tragedy of Diana’s life, it has not been formally used since she died after a car crash in Paris on August 31, 1997. So resonant is the title, and so strong its emotional overtones, that when Prince Charles married Camilla Parker Bowles in 2005 the decision was taken that she would not use the title Princess of Wales, even though she was entitled to do so. Instead she was called Duchess of Cornwall, the title by which she has since been known.

Prince Charles, William and Harry at Diana’s funeral. Picture: AFP.

It was thought that the public, many of whom blamed Camilla for the break-up of Charles’s marriage, would not stomach her taking the title that was once Diana’s. Now it is Catherine’s.

The death of the Queen heralds Catherine taking a more prominent role. She is now the second most important woman in the royal family, and one whose looks, fashion sense and relative youth mean that the focus will be on her as much as it is on Camilla, or even more.

Catherine has already demonstrated where her charitable interests lie – in early-years development, mental health, art, sport and addiction – although as her children grow older, and the demands placed on her grow, she is likely to undertake more royal engagements and take on more patronages.

Their third child, Prince Louis, was born in April 2018, fulfilling Catherine’s reported wish that she and William would have “at least” three children so that they could have the same sort of family life that she enjoyed.

Queen Elizabeth II (3rd L) stands on Buckingham Palace balcony with (From L) Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, Prince Charles, Prince George, Prince William, Princess Charlotte, Catherine and Prince Louis at the end of the Platinum Pageant in London. Picture: AFP.

Brought up in Berkshire, although the family had a couple of years in Amman, Jordan, when she was small, she was the eldest of Michael and Carole Middleton’s children. Close to her siblings, Pippa and James, she enjoyed a happy and stable upbringing, which not only influenced her approach to her own family life but also seems to have had a profound effect on William, whose childhood was marred by the unhappiness and, later, the break-up of his parents’ marriage.

Both of them have given the impression of wishing their own children to have an upbringing with as much of a Middleton influence as a royal one: it was noticeable that after Prince George was born in 2013, the first place that William and Catherine went with their new baby after spending only one night at Kensington Palace was Catherine’s parents’ house in Bucklebury.

“Queen Elizabeth was a life well lived; a promise with destiny kept and she is mourned most deeply in her passing. That promise of lifelong service I renew to you all today.”

His Majesty The King addresses the Nation and the Commonwealth. pic.twitter.com/xQXVW5PPQ2

— The Royal Family (@RoyalFamily) September 9, 2022

Their devotion to their family led the couple to retreat to Anmer Hall, their Norfolk bolthole, for much of their children’s early years. By the time it came for George to go to school at Thomas’s Battersea, a mixed day school in south London where he was later joined by his sister Princess Charlotte, they had moved to Kensington Palace, to coincide with William’s decision to give up his job as an air ambulance pilot and take up full-time royal duties.

Then in 2022 the family moved to Adelaide Cottage, a relatively modest four-bedroom house on the Windsor estate. The idea was to be able to educate the children nearby – all three were enrolled in a local prep, the pounds 21,000-a-year Lambrook School – and also to visit the Queen regularly.

William and Kate with Prince George, and Princess Charlotte of Cambridge arrive for a settling in afternoon at Lambrook School, near Ascot. Picture: AFP.

Some said that the duchess was slow to embrace royal duties. However, the Cambridges always made it clear that they wanted to enjoy their children while they were small. And, gradually, Catherine has taken on more. She embarked on solo overseas trips to the Netherlands and Luxembourg and became increasingly self-assured when it came to the nerve-racking business of making speeches. As her confidence grew, so did her ambition, and she undertook a short national tour to highlight a project on the under-fives. With a team of experts drafted in to advise her on early-years development, she increasingly revealed herself as someone who wanted to make a serious contribution to national life. That, combined with her reserve and lack of ostentation, prompted comparisons with the Queen – and, by extension, inevitable comparisons with the Duchess of Sussex.

As the pendulum of public opinion swung back in favour of the Cambridges, who for a while had been seen as less exciting and, indeed, less modern and progressive than the Sussexes, Catherine increasingly began to be seen as the model of what a modern royal consort should be like.

Catherine shows Queen Elizabeth and Prince William around the 'Back to Nature Garden' garden, that she designed for the 2019 RHS Chelsea Flower Show. Picture; AFP.

Despite her new focus, for some of the public, and the readers of some newspapers, the duchess will often be little more than a clothes horse, a chance to gawp at her fashion sense and discuss whether it was appropriate to wear Topshop this week or Alexander McQueen.

That aspect of her life – a fate that few female members of the royal family manage to escape, other perhaps than Princess Anne – became the subject of fiercest debate when the Booker Prize-winning author Hilary Mantel described her in 2013 as a “shop window mannequin”, someone who was “as painfully thin as anyone could wish” and “without character”. The author’s comments were, however, less of an attack on the duchess’s character – or lack of it – than a scathing assessment of how royal women are viewed by the public.

Catherine, Mantel said, was perceived as having “no personality of her own, entirely defined by what she wore”, and seemed capable of “going from perfect bride to perfect mother, with no messy deviation”.

Despite the furore over her lecture, Mantel was more sympathetic about Catherine and her female royal predecessors than many assumed. “Everybody stares at them,” she said, “and however airy the enclosure they inhabit, it’s still a cage.”

The Times