‘New world’: Dramatic new Kate photos hide major royal shift

The Princess has attended her most significant royal event since announcing she had finished chemo, but the shots hide a huge change.

If ever there was an image that really summed up the bare-bones fundamentals of royalty, it’s this one of Kate, the Princess of Wales.

Imagine a grey London morning standing about in nippy, near-winter temperatures, adopting a sombre expression for a military ceremony.

It’s not glamorous, it’s not fun and no one is turning up with a sandwich any time soon.

Welcome to Crown Inc.

The princess’ appearance at the Cenotaph in London for Remembrance Sunday marks her most high profile public outing since announcing, in September via a high-gloss video, that she had finished chemotherapy.

Based on the shots from Sunday, if you squinted and had a very short term memory, you could nearly, just nearly, think everything was back to normal.

But pictures are tricky, perfidious things that don’t tell the full story.

It’s a new world this week, one in which a man accused of dozens of counts of sexual assault and harassment who also fanboyed over Hitler is about to be given the nuclear codes and one in which the princess is slowly putting into place a new royal order. Oh, and she’s gone back to the gym.

It’s really all happening right now.

What has emerged is that less is about to be made into more, with Kate the driving force behind what sounds like the biggest royal rethink since someone decided to take away Prince Philip’s access to the fax.

The new year won’t see the 42-year-old book in a whole host of engagements and get right back to it. Instead, she has realised that she can actually do her job not only better but smarter – and by never leaving home.

For one thing, there will be no racing to make up for lost time or rushing to re-assume what used to be a normal workload.

Biographer Robert Jobson told Hello! Kate is set to approach her working life anew and with “a different perspective”.

Catherine, Princess of Wales stands on the balcony during the National Service of Remembrance at The Cenotaph on November 10 Picture: Chris Jackson/Getty Images

The new year won’t see the 42-year-old book in a whole host of engagements and get right back to it. Picture: Chris Jackson/Getty Images

He argues that “she will come back in stages and do things that are important to her” and that means that we will “not necessarily see” her heading off to do “a big tranche of engagements, one after the other”.

Practically, what this could mean is that “rather than travel all over the country all the time, like she used to, I think she will concentrate on more impactful events”.

And that, right there, is the one word that is key to understanding all of this – “impact”.

Time was that for an HRH to have an “impact” they needed to put on a nice suit, have their policeman rev up their official Jag and motor off to a regional drop-in centre with the Fleet Street press pack in tow. The way a well-meaning princess or duchess or even a Queen gave back and served was by functioning as a sort of titled tractor beam who could highlight issues by physically turning up somewhere.

Royalling required presence in the world and having the media and all of their flashing bulbs trailing in One’s wake to record events.

Then Mark Zuckerberg and his digital progeny came along.

Social media has played an ever more central role in the royal communications strategy, but 2024 has demonstrated the degree to which it now trumps that older-flavour royal work. Today, the Waleses seem to have realised that they can have an outsized impact without leaving the Windsor security cordon.

This increasing fusing of royalty, digital content and entertainment (royal-tainment?) reflects not only the changing ways we the people get information, but it is simply the most effective way of getting Crown Inc’s message out there.

Kate’s appearance on Sunday was the most significant since she finished cancer treatment. Picture: Chris Jackson/Getty Images

Look no further than Prince William’s recent documentary about his campaign to end homelessness – not only did it do good by shining light on the issue, but it simultaneously served as an excellent bit of pro-royal propaganda. Win, win.

The first episode was watched by 1.5 million people, which is obviously far more people than the prince would have reached by spending an hour or two serving lunch at a Liverpudlian soup kitchen while tabloid photographers snapped him manfully using a soup ladle.

The same strategy was also obvious in the three-minute video put out in September to announce that Kate had finished cancer treatment. That sort of news once might have been communicated via economical press release, but instead it got the full Spielberg treatment, with higher production values than many Oscar nominated-films and requiring a professional butterfly wrangler.

This year has also thrown up something else too – that less of something can actually have a far wider and greater effect and doesn’t require getting out of One’s pyjamas.

As Jobson has pointed out of Kensington Palace, “they probably realise that if you get a lot of something all the time, it lessens its impact. With Catherine being the main female star of the royal family, actually you can make a bigger statement by being seen less”.

Kate shocked the world with her initial cancer bombshell.

The princess put out a three-minute video in September announcing she had finished cancer treatment. Picture: Will Warr/Prince and Princess of Wales/Instagram

This would seem to already be coming into effect.

William and Kate had been slated to undertake an official tour of Italy earlier this year, prior to her diagnosis. However, reports have recently emerged that it will now be King Charles and Queen Camilla who will undertake the pasta-twirling jaunt.

All of which adds up to one simple thing – less Kate than we are used to.

Only this time, it’s about the princess making decisions about what shape and form she wants her life to be and not for health reasons.

As Jobson has revealed, “Catherine is doing very well. She is back training at the gym and doing all the things she wanted to do”.

And it sounds like none of the things she doesn’t want to do anymore.

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 ‘New world’: Dramatic new Kate photos hide major royal shift