How does she do it? Against the odds, while all around her lose their heads, the Princess of Wales consistently manages to square the royal circle and showcase the quiet qualities of industry, intent and Englishness. With masterful precision, in the wake of last year’s cancer scare, Her Royal Highness doubled down on this streamlined royal brand. These days she is sharper, more exquisitely elegant, less demure and more deliberate. There will be no more talk of designer labels, her family deserves better than mid-range Adelaide Cottage (Forest Lodge a sizeable upgrade), as for also-ran royals, Kate has absolutely no truck with the Windsors’ unseemly stragglers.
Weeks before Fergie was exposed as a “hellaciously” obsequious, money-grabbing member of the Epstein entourage, untouchable Kate gracefully rebuffed the then Duchess of York’s advances on the steps of Westminster Cathedral. At the Duchess of Kent’s funeral, the flatulently entitled Fergie skulked behind the impregnable Princess – she had no chance.
The sharp contrast between the two women was eye-popping, Kate’s arch face a fitting riposte to the already sombre day. Dubbed the “protective huntress” by one royal-watcher, once more the Windsors’ meticulous player had fended off danger, her poise and ice-queen exterior the alchemy that has led to this new alpha epitaph. Huntress Kate, the untouchable royal charm, silently signalling that enough is enough. Yards away on the same step, William mirrored his wife’s behaviour in the face of Andrew’s buffoonery.
It is ironic that once upon a time, exhibiting the same effortful elegance exposed Kate to acerbic attack. Who can forget the righteous Hilary Mantel taking down the Duchess of Cambridge with her pen? “A jointed doll on which certain rags are hung… a shop window mannequin, with no personality of her own.”
Today it is indicative of Kate’s changed status that simply to repeat Mantel’s words is to sting the page, an almost impossible sacrilege about one so great. Didn’t she realise that Kate was so much greater than the sum of her parts?
And yet, if we return to that controversial article written in February 2013, perhaps Mantel, the ultimate observer, identified something in the princess that the rest of us missed. A quality, or essence, that has subsequently blossomed into the royal’s superpower. Mantel wrote that Kate “appeared to have been designed by committee, and built by craftsmen”.
She went on to describe “a perfect plastic smile and the spindles of her limbs hand-turned and gloss-varnished”. After all, right down to her beautifully manicured fingertips, there is nothing accidental about Kate. Was her “committee” the family around the Middletons’ kitchen table in Berkshire? With her feet beneath that table, mum Carole confected a multi-million pound business and rustled up a princess-in-the-making from the profits. The craftsmen at Downe House and then Marlborough College knew what they were doing (public schools can’t afford to get it wrong), with St Andrew’s, Scotland’s oldest university, the perfect finishing school. Apparently, Prince William first noticed the spindles of Kate’s limbs on the catwalk in their second year. But there was something else.
Seared into the nation’s story and William’s childhood narrative was the demise of his late, great mother Diana, the “most hunted person of the modern age”. It can’t be a coincidence that the prince’s wife has subsequently been dubbed Diana’s polar opposite: a “huntress”. As Mantel observed: “She appears precision-made… so different from Diana, whose human awkwardness and emotional incontinence showed in her every gesture.”
In Kate, William’s canny choice was a deliberate pivot away from messy accidental aristocratic excesses. It is ironic that enormously grand brands are so prone to carelessness when it comes to their hereditary advantage. Not as high up the golden branches of privilege as her late sister-in-law, Fergie is also an aristocrat, and poles apart from girl-next-door Kate. Sloppy and impulsive, she doesn’t understand what she has got (or rather had) because she never worked to get there. Unlike Kate.
In contrast to the opulent neglect that was the hallmark of Fergie and Diana’s early years, Kate’s home counties childhood blended the ingredients of effortful improvement. Her mother, Carole, deliberately placed the family’s newly acquired financial heft into helping her children access the establishment. The results were winsome, including a range of upper-class accomplishments for her eldest daughter: rock climbing, tennis, piano playing.
Can-do Kate is no accident. Whether she deliberately hunted down William with her choice of university is a moot point; what we do know is that her royal marriage and everything since is born of a devotion to monarchy – an institution that she has always believed in. The success of the royal family is her success, its survival, her survival. Problematic players have no place at the table; on the steps of a funeral, at a Sandringham Christmas, or ideally anywhere within walking distance of her new home in Windsor Great Park.
The internet is awash with rumours that William and Kate have leant heavily on cousins Eugenie and Beatrice to help extricate their cumbersome parents from the Royal Lodge. Possible alternative options include the Waleses’ current abode, Adelaide Cottage, also within Windsor Great Park. That simply will not do. Gen Z have watched on aghast at the poisonous drip-drip of negative press that’s seeped out from Andrew’s every orifice for over a decade. William and Kate understand that the former Yorks can’t just loll in abeyance; they need to be exculpated from the family. Not an easy task. No quick win. But Kate has always played the long game, and both she and her husband have a brutal, steely streak.
The Waleses mask their steely survival instinct with carefully curated charity work; particularly Kate, who cares for children, invests heavily in early years research for the Royal Foundation and provides the royal family with lightning rod glamour. Lest we forget, Donald Trump referred to the forty-three-year-old Princess as “so radiant, and so healthy and so beautiful”. No mean feat for a middle-aged woman with three children and a recent cancer diagnosis, irrespective of her wealth and domestic setup.
Early doors in the gym and well-tailored clothes are Kate’s best friends, but she is equally aware that the royal path is littered with pitfalls. Queen Victoria cautioned against her children having friends, such was the potential for collateral damage. One hundred and fifty years later and Kate identified dangers even closer to home. Her studied coolness towards Meghan is indicative of the couple’s wariness of a newcomer who appeared to neither understand nor value the institution they cleave to. Hackles were raised early on; Harry tells us that William enunciated the words “American actress” as if he were referring to a “convicted felon”. What came next from the Sussexes was arguably more damaging to the monarchy than a little light burglary – crown jewels can be replaced. Rational Kate was right to keep her distance.
Mantel identified Kate as hand-picked by monarchy. The writer mused: “She looks like a nicely brought-up young lady, with ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ part of her vocabulary.” Crucially, Kate was grateful, always saving her deepest, most respectful curtsy for the late Queen. Nowadays, as she inches ever nearer to the throne, that gratitude is inflected outwards: family players who complain about royalty (Meghan and Harry) or abuse its abundant privilege (Andrew and Fergie) are seen off. Overt entitlement, ostentatious privilege, unsolicited whinging and weird behaviour from undeserving family members will not be tolerated. As outsider Kate well knows, the British monarchy can, and should, take nothing for granted.
Today, huntress Kate has her eye on the main prize; she knows exactly what she wants. There is no coming back for Andrew and Fergie. Unlike those born inside the gilded cage, the woman who spent the first half of her life adapting to the royal family fully understands the cost of success.
Tessa Dunlop is the author of
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