Princess of Wales missing from major palace event

Buckingham Palace has rolled out the red carpet for a major reception - but the Princess of Wales was a no-show.

Well, well, well.

I’m disappointed. You’re probably disappointed. The UK’s homespun sequin industry is probably disappointed, if not despondent and already on the gin, never mind the tonic.

Kate, the Princess of Wales has skipped out on what is one of the most glamorous, sparkly and tiara-required events of the royal year, leaving us with nothing to do but to look at men full of stolid Teutonic genes making nice with minor dignitaries who have been shoehorned into rented tails.

Sigh. Why can’t we ever have nice things?

On Tuesday night, UK time, Buckingham Palace threw open its doors and put some mid-range sparkling on ice for the annual reception for the Diplomatic Corps of the Court of St James’s. Normally held on the first Tuesday in December, this year the white tie event has been brought forward to accommodate the upcoming state visit of the Emir of Qatar.

And in normal times, when cancer is a thing that happens to other people and the Princess of Wales is a one-woman booster for Britain’s formal frock purveyors, she shows up every December at the party looking a right bobby dazzler in some superbly glitzy dress and so many diamonds I’m surprised she has not developed sciatica.

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King Charles has also been battling cancer this year. Picture: Justin Tallis/Pool/AFP

Really, what Kate normally does is to give us the full princess, dialled up to the hilt with a few extra baubles chucked on. It’s a rare moment of unabashedly maximalist royalling when the normally restrained mother-of-three truly leans in to her title and destiny and then leans in some more while applying more lip gloss.

But now, it’s a shiny bright spot we have been denied.

At this year’s Diplomatic Corps reception, there was no Kate in attendance doing that thing she does of making hours of no doubt exhausting small talk with nervous grown men and women look positively effortless.

To be fair, the Princess of Wales’ non-attendance is not a shocker given that for much of this year, the 42-year-old was undergoing chemotherapy after doctors discovered cancer had been present during planned abdominal surgery in January. It was only in September that Kate revealed, via extravagantly produced video, that she was finally done with chemo and cancer-free.

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Kate revealed she was finally done with chemo in September. Picture: Will Warr/Prince and Princess of Wales/Instagram

Which is to say, she is still very much on what she has termed her “path to healing and full recovery”.

However, we are in something of a transition phase right now, a liminal period between Kate on sick leave and a full-blown bells and whistles return to work.

Earlier this month, the princess took her place at the Cenotaph for the Remembrance Sunday services, a lip reader catching her saying to Sophie, the Duchess of Edinburgh, “You’re never quite ready for this, are you?”

So too will Kate be out and about on December 6 for her now annual Christmas concert at Westminster Abbey, for what has become a concerted, united royal family outing that sees cousins, of the first, second and third variety, out in gleeful force.

What’s worth thinking about is why Kate did not add the Diplomatic Corps reception to this very tidy list of planned events. Because make no bones about it, her going to the reception would have been a clear boon for Crown Inc and therefore Charles.

Added to which, if she had gone, it would have been the first time that His Majesty would have been photographed with the Princess of Wales since her chemo-ending announcement, and that would have made for a nice, juicy, PR-able moment as a nice bonus.

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She did make it to the Remembrance Sunday ceremony at the Cenotaph. Toby Melville/Pool/AFP

Kate also attended the Royal British Legion Festival of Remembrance at the Royal Albert Hall on November 9. Picture: Chris J. Ratcliffe - WPA Pool/Getty Images

Obviously, it’s not just the princess who has been battling cancer, but her father-in-law and boss too. It has been a hard year after a bruising chapter for the Palace, which only just barely skated through the downfall of Prince Andrew and then Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s defection to pastures green (and greenback-y) in the US.

Let’s be clear: Charles is King. He does not need an art history graduate who can wear the hell out of a dress in his vague vicinity to do his job with all the aplomb imaginable – but nor would it have hurt. He has a throne and a crown and a sceptre and all the frippery, but it’s the princess who is the real glam-a-rama drawcard, n’est pas?

I know, it would hardly have been a quick or easy outing for Kate. The degree of hair and makeup required would be Oscars red carpet-worthy and that sort of thing takes hours. Likewise, while the royal family leave before the reception’s dinner and dancing starts (yes, this is some real life Bridgerton level royalling) nor is it a quickie, pop in for a tight ten kinda gig.

Still, the princess going would have a booster for the King, a show of support and a reassuring gesture that Crown Inc is inching back towards something approximating normal.

And it would have been very nice for us.

Bring on December 6. We need a nice fat Kate injection, and if she has brought the decorative real life reindeers back, so much the better.

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 Princess of Wales missing from major palace event