The Princess of Wales's ability to keep a cool head is one of her greatest assets – don’t expect her to look troubled
Today, a birthday. On Wednesday, a new school term. It should have been a week of family celebrations for the Princess of Wales, but instead those two events have bookended one of the unhappiest days in the recent history of the Royal family.
The Duke of Sussex’s autobiography, Spare, finally goes on sale on Tuesday, Jan 10, casting the princess as one of the villains who forced its heroes Harry and Meghan into exile.
Its pages drip with poison about the princess, and the way she responds to it will help to define a year in which she has big plans for her future.
Palace staff refuse to discuss Prince Harry’s book, but it is clear that Kate has no intention of being blown off course, with a high-profile public appearance coming later this week and a major announcement due towards the end of the month.
If past experience is anything to go by, she will rise above the storm, showing no outward signs of being troubled. Her ability to glide calmly on, no matter how turbulent the air is around her, is one of her greatest attributes, and it can only be achieved with the support of friends and family, who make up a vital support network.
“Whatever might be happening behind closed doors, she has always had an ability to put the job first,” says someone who has worked with her. “Aside from all the things the public knows about, there have been plenty of times when things have cropped up in private, but what you see in public is always [Kate] behaving in the exact same way. So this won’t knock her off her stride.”
As she celebrates her 41st birthday today (Monday January 9) quietly with her family at Adelaide Cottage, the five-bedroom property on the Windsor estate that is now their main home, the princess will be spending tomorrow getting her three children ready for their second term at Lambrook School in Berkshire.
Later in the week, the couple will be in the north of England for a long-standing engagement supporting one of the country’s most hard-pressed communities, a theme that will run like “a golden thread throughout the year”, according to aides.
It will be the Waleses’ first public engagement since the media first got its hands on copies of Spare, but anyone expecting to see signs of strain on the princess’s face is likely to be wide of the mark.
I well remember the day Kate heard the mortifying news that topless photographs of her had been published in a French magazine in 2012. The couple were in Malaysia when the story broke, and I was part of the royal press pack reporting on that tour.
The then Duke and Duchess of Cambridge visited a mosque in Kuala Lumpur that day, and while William was an open book, a look of fury on his face when he caught sight of the media, Kate was utterly inscrutable. It later became clear that she was far less angry about the whole thing than William had been, and it is safe to assume that the same is true about Prince Harry’s book.
That is thanks in no small part to the support she has around her, most importantly her mother Carole, to whom she speaks on an almost daily basis (her sister Pippa is a far more independent spirit, friends say) and who is never far away now that the Waleses live in Windsor, just 30 miles from the Middleton family home in Bucklebury.
Carole Middleton is often to be seen getting a commuter train from Theale, her local station, to pop across Berkshire to visit her daughter and grandchildren, and locals in Bucklebury are used to the presence of police patrol cars signalling that a family visit is being made in the other direction.
“You can’t underestimate how important the support of Kate’s mother, father and sister are to her,” says one ally. “They remain incredibly tight as a family.”
If her mother and Pippa are unavailable, the princess also has a support network of ultra-loyal and ultra-discreet friends, many of whom date back to her school days at Marlborough College, if she wants a sympathetic ear.
Chief among them is Emilia Jardine Patterson, the former classmate and godmother to Prince George who took Kate off to Ibiza for a girls’ holiday after her temporary break-up from Prince William in 2007.
Another school friend, Trini Foyle, lives in London and first became a mother at the same time as the princess, enabling them to arrange playdates for their children while they catch up with each other.
During school holidays, when the Waleses are staying at Anmer Hall in Norfolk, the princess can call on the company of the ‘Turnip toffs’ who include Lady Laura Meade, Sophie Carter and Hannah Carter, another Marlborough alumna.
The Prince of Wales, in contrast, cannot turn to his mother when he needs to vent steam, nor his brother, leaving only his father, the King, who may not always be available.
Inwardly, the princess would not be human if she failed to be hurt by some of the brickbats thrown at her by Prince Harry. He portrays her as a cold fish, too aloof or uptight to engage in girl talk with Meghan and petty in the extreme.
Top of the charge sheet against the princess is that she is said to have demanded an apology from the Duchess of Sussex, in a clear-the-air meeting between the two couples over tea at the Wales’s Kensington Palace apartment in June 2018, a month after the Sussexes married, over her suggestion that Kate had “baby brain”.
The princess is said to have told Meghan: “You talked about my hormones. We are not close enough for you to talk about my hormones!”
Harry told ITV’s Tom Bradby that “very quickly it became Meghan versus Kate”, and said it was “fair” to say that they did not get on “from the get-go”.
How long ago it seems that Harry would talk affectionately of Kate as “the sister I never had” and loved popping round for chicken dinners at Kensington Palace.
There had never been obvious tensions in the relationship between Prince Harry and Kate in the days before he met Meghan, but those who were close enough to observe the two couples at close quarters have described how the two women always struggled to get on, partly because of a clash of transatlantic cultures, but also because they have such different personalities.
The fallout from the book will be far less seismic than the restructuring that had to be done as a result of Megxit three years ago. Back then, long-term plans had been made for the ‘Fab Four’, such as their Heads Together campaign on mental health and their joint Royal Foundation, all of which had to be disentangled when four became two.
The biggest risk of damage from Spare is in America, where sympathy for Harry and Meghan – and suspicion of William and Kate – remains higher than it is here.
It was not for nothing that the prince and princess chose Boston as the location for the announcement of the winners of the latest Earthshot Prize for environmental initiatives: the 2021 accounts of their Royal Foundation show that it received £5.65 million in grants from the American Friends of the Royal Foundation, a significant fundraising arm of their charity.
On the home front, there is far less concern about potential damage to Kate’s profile. Later this month she will launch what royal aides describe as a “substantial” new initiative in her flagship Early Years campaign.
One source said she would be “straight out of the gates” with a “big moment” for her which she hopes will get the whole country talking about the importance of child development in the under-five age category.
Preparations for the King’s coronation mean the couple will not embark on a spring tour this year, meaning they will have more time to spend in Wales, deepening their bond with the principality whose name they bear.
One big move they will not be making this year is to Windsor Castle. Despite speculation at the time of Queen Elizabeth II’s death that they would move into the big house, they are so happy at Adelaide Cottage that they may well stay there for years, friends say.
“It gives them an opportunity to spend time as a family, and to have the privacy they craved,” said one source. “Kensington Palace was always a little bit of a fishbowl for them, and now they can just enjoy each other’s company.”
Prince Harry claims he has never been happier. Prince William too, according to his friends. But only one of the brothers seems to be anywhere near content, if the events of this week are anything to go by.
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