Sad reason Kate Middleton desperately needs Princess Mary

As Princess Mary prepares to take the throne, her British counterpart Kate Middleton is in desperate need of some help.

COMMENT

Commoner. There is no word that more egregiously gets stuck in my craw more than ‘commoner’ yet it is a word that has suddenly rebounded into use in the last couple of weeks thanks to the imminent elevation of Our Mary to being the next Queen of Denmark.

Though Mary has a law degree and was brought up in the bosom of bourgeois domesticity, instead she keeps getting stuck with this descriptor that makes it sound like she started life sloshing about in pig swill and subsisting on turnips.

Crown Prince Frederik with then Tasmanian advertising executive Mary Donaldson in a photo believed to be taken shortly after their first meeting in 2000. Picture: Crown Prince Frederik and Princess Mary of Denmark

Being lumped with this snobbish word is just another thing that unites Mary with her counterpart across the North Sea, Kate, the Princess of Wales.

The two of them also bear an uncanny resemblance to one another.

Both were middle-class gals who spent their 20s enjoying two-for-one Cosmopolitans until a lovelorn prince entered the frame and swept them off their feet for a lifetime of opening hospital wards. Hans Christian Andersen, eat your heart out.

Princess Mary and Princess Kate bear an uncanny resemblance to one another.

Except, the similarities end there because while Mary will begin her time as Queen able to sleep soundly knowing that the future of the monarchy is all but guaranteed, the same does not hold for Kate.

If there is a secret WhatsApp chat involving all the women set to become Queen next (Kate, Mary, plus Crown Princess Mette-Marit of Norway, Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden, Princess Elisabeth of Belgium, Princess Catharina-Amalia of the Netherlands, and Princess Leonor of Spain) - and you know I desperately hope there is - then Kate should be asking Mary for advice.

All and any advice.

Maybe Mary could send any PowerPoints, spreadsheets and general thoughts she might have, that is if she can spare the time between her on-the-hour, every-hour admonishing of soon-to-be King Frederik X, lover of ill-advised Spanish minibreaks.

Kate, Princess of Wales, with her family and Mia Tindall at Sandringham Church on Christmas Day. Picture: Samir Hussein/WireImage

New polling out this week represents only slightly worse news for the British royal family than if Prince Harry had been given his own daytime talk show.

Support for the monarchy has fallen below the 50 per cent mark.

Cymbals clash, thunder claps off in the distance, King Charles cowers behind his favourite Rococo sofa and covers his ears.

The research - commissioned by anti-crown Republic UK - found that less than half (48 per cent) of surveyed Brits preferred a monarchy over an elected head of state (32 per cent).

The accession of Charles and his self-described “sausage fingers” to the throne was always going to be a major inflection point.

Okay, okay, it’s probably too early to get Savill’s in to work out what St James’s Palace might fetch on the open market, and Kate and her other half Prince William, the Prince of Wales enjoy robust support.

But. With this polling, it’s impossible to draw any other conclusion here than the British monarchy is looking like it’s on increasingly shaky ground.

The death of the late Queen, the accession of her son and his self-described “sausage fingers” to the throne was always going to be a major inflection point.

Her late Majesty, her trademark inscrutability and her sheer staying power had earned her a nation’s respect, by and large, a woman shunted into a job she had never wanted and which she did with a certain resigned stoicism.

Then came King Charles III whose promotion to the top job was always going to trigger a more profound, fundamental national questioning of the whole regal box of dice.

Does an institution that is 700 years older than the printing press have any place coexisting in the same age as ChatGPT?

This week’s numbers seem to suggest that Brits are sceptical.

Contrast that 48 per cent figure with the polling that Mary and Fred are enjoying only a two-hour Eurowings flight away.

In Denmark today, according to the New York Times, more than 75 per cent of the population supports the monarchy. Such a figure is something Charles could only dream about, like the immediate demolition of the Tate Modern and Handel being piped through all Tube stations.

‘Commoner’ Kate Middleton and Prince William on the day of their graduation ceremony at St Andrew's University in Scotland. Picture: Middleton Family/Clarence House via GettyImages

Which is why Kate needs Mary to give her a few pointers on how the House of Glücksburg has managed to pull off the unthinkable: massive popularity in the modern age.

One answer might lie in how pared back the Danish crown is. Take coronations. Charles’ cost an estimated $190 million and involved 4000 military personnel, 200 horses and the ferrying down from Scotland of a special ninth century rock that the King had to sit over. (The Stone of Scone or Stone of Destiny as it’s also called.)

The whole thing was, as has been the case for centuries, a mishmash of medieval and Hanoverian theatre put on to lend the monarchy a hint of the divine and to charm the proles. What a twofer.

Crown Prince Frederik and then fiancee Mary Donaldson arrive at her sister’s wedding in 2004. Picture: Ryan Pierse/Getty Images

The couple in 2022 in The Hague, Netherlands. Picture: Patrick van Katwijk/WireImage

However on Sunday, when King Frederik X officially assumes the crown, it will only involve him sitting at an oval table and signing his name. No fuss, no muss and certainly no trumpeters.

The Danish royal family have also demonstrated a much greater willingness to drop the trappings and just be much more normal.

Take Christmas Day, just past, when Queen Margrethe arrived at Aarhus Cathedral for a service in an anonymous black people mover.

The A-Team: Queen Margrethe in an anonymous black people mover. Picture: Mikkel Berg Pedersen / Ritzau Scanpix / AFP / Denmark OUT

By contrast, Charles’ London runabout, which he inherited from his mother, is a bespoke Bentley limousine that is blast resistant, can survive a chemical attack and has lamb's wool seats.

I suppose, thinking about why the Danish monarchy is merrily chugging along while the British one is painfully grinding gears, really comes down to two things. Firstly, the question of value for taxpayers’ money and secondly, that the Danish one does not come with the excess historical and cultural baggage that the British one does.

Recent years have seen conversations about race, colonialism and power surge to global prominence, issues which, in Britain, are fundamentally tied to the historical crown.

The House of Windsor has come to represent so much more than just a pasty bunch of do-gooders who love the Chelsea Flower Show.

Today, to support the monarchy does not just mean to take a position on how good of a job Charles & Co might be doing but it is to take a position on these pressing issues. Issues that demand an answer from the Palace. Issues that The Firm seems totally adrift at dealing with.

Which is why Kate needs Mary and any advice she can give her. Probably starting with how to find out the trade-in value of the Bentley.

I’d say it’s time for Charles to stop trying to make his own yoghurt in his downtime and to start researching the sticker price of a new Tarago.

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 Sad reason Kate Middleton desperately needs Princess Mary