Princess Kate comeback unleashes new mess
The Princess of Wales’s Buckingham Palace appearance last week was a huge success, but it’s raised a whole new problem no one saw coming.
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That royal family of ours, they generally don’t do things by halves at times.
Race horses? The late Queen built up a stable of over 1000 winners.
Nice hedgey bits? King Charles has just finished his new topiary garden at Sandringham that involved 5000 yew trees.
And holidays? Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, in their footloose and husband-free 20s, clocked up 24 in one year alone.
But halves is where we are now when it comes to where we are now with Kate, the Princess of Wales.
Not ‘where’ where, mind you (Adelaide Cottage, Windsor, ideally on a sofa really giving lolling and her recovery her all) but the bigger philosophical ‘where’.
She’s back! Kinda, maybe, tentatively, sometimes. But she’s also not too as she continues to undergo preventive chemotherapy and treatment for an unspecified form of cancer.
We are, this week, entering a new chapter in the tragi-drama that has been 2024 for Kate, a chapter could bring with it a whole new slew of pressures, problems and the need for an occasional cooling brow washcloth.
It has now been a week since the princess’ big ta-da moment when she attended the Trooping the Colour, her first official engagement in six months.
Over the course of three days, before, during and after Trooping, Kate and husband Prince William executed a series of textbook royal manoeuvres.
First came the release of a deeply personal statement and new photo flagging the princess’ Trooping turnabout, then second came the day itself which was so hitch-free it should have had courtiers shedding tears of joy, before finally, on the on Sunday, the Waleses released a photo for Father’s Day that precipitated the required ‘awws’ and all without the world’s photo agencies having meltdowns.
I’m assuming that sobs of relief and the joyous crinkly opening of celebratory packets of Hobnobs could be heard in the vicinity of the Waleses’ Kensington Palace offices after this blinder of an operation.
However, as the princess herself said, she’s not out of the woods yet and the phase we are entering, I’m not sure it’s going to be, by any stretch of the imagination, an easy one for her.
What the princess’ Trooping return has set in motion is something potentially very dangerous – she has given the public and the palace hope. She has opened the door, a crack, to her full-powered, one-day return and with that could come a whole new set of stresses and decisions she will have to face.
Kate now has to contend with raised expectations, with anticipation and with having to possibly and repeatedly disappoint the public. (Albeit a wholly understanding and supportive public.)
The 42-year-old, in her statement last week, made clear she has “good days and bad days” and that decisions about her popping up in public would be made on a case-by-case basis.
Therefore, just because she might have relocated her trusty GhD once in the name of King and Country for Trooping won’t mean we can bet on guaranteed repeat performances. Kate, sources told the Telegraph, is “hoping to join a few public engagements over the summer”.
Last week palace sources briefed the Telegraph that, while Garter Day and Royal Ascot had been “ruled out” for the princess, “everything else – Wimbledon, the Japanese State Visit, and bread-and-butter engagements – remains a possibility.”
And it’s that “everything else” that concerns us here. Going forward, every event where we might hope to see the Princess of Wales in the coming months will now come with an anticipation and a hopefulness – and therefore weight on her – that was not there prior to her Trooping return.
It’s a double-edged sword because that “everything else” could also end up translating to raised hopes being dashed again and again.
Prior to Trooping, we were all operating under a blanket no-way-José-will-Kate-appear mandate however that has given way to this maybe-yes, maybe-no liminal grey area. (50 shades of hey, she just-might be able to come after all?)
For example, next Tuesday night, UK time, will see Buckingham Palace’s kitchens have to put on their game faces and go from having to only produce a few rounds of multigrain salad sandwiches with extra sprouts for the King’s working lunch to whipping up four courses for 170 people for the Japanese State Banquet.
While previously there had been no chance that the princess could or would go to the Banquet, now we have “everything else … remains a possibility”.
Join me in some furious agreement here, come Tuesday, Kate should not feel under any obligation to have to wriggle into no end of sequins and diamonds in the name of Japanese-British relations and the ongoing sale of gas turbines and mid-priced SUVs, but … how could she not feel pressure here too?
Kate now has to juggle doing what is right herself and her body with knowing what a thrill it would be for the masses – and what an extraordinary boon to her father-in-law the King – for her to show up.
Prior to Trooping, there had just been a carte blanche, no-chance-in-hell that the Princess of Wales could or would be at an event such as next week’s Banquet, thus meaning there did not have to be last minute huddled meetings and phone calls flying backwards and forwards between Clarence House and Windsor.
But that would seem to be where we are now, with Kate having to go through the rigmarole, and hopefully not but still, possible stress of totting up her wellbeing versus
Crown Inc.’s palpable need for her to get back out there and to fly the proverbial flag. Going forward, every event where we might hope to see the Princess of Wales in the coming months will now come with an anticipation and a hopefulness – and therefore a particular strain and load on her – that was not there prior to her Trooping return.
There is another question in this Japanese State Visit that must be asked too. Anyone else wondering what deeply insensitive, if not just racist, quips the ghost of Prince Philip will be heard muttering under his spectral breath next week as Their Majesties The Emperor and Empress of Japan pretend to be interested in Queen Camilla’s matchbook collection?
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 Kate comeback unleashes new mess
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