Royal revolution:
Harry and Meghan’s nuptials and the birth of Kate and William’s third child next year are expected to ignite a new level of royal fervour – and scrutiny. William Langley reports on the changing world of the royal family’s shining star, the Duchess of Camb
changes in “The Firm” that are reshaping the future for Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge
The cosy, low-key celebration that marked the Duchess of Cambridge’s 35th birthday in January offered little indication of the tumultuous year ahead. Snuggled into her rustic retreat with her husband, Prince William, and their two small children, Kate’s life looked, and probably felt, like the fulfilment of a fairytale.
Today, the Cambridges’ circumstances are dramatically different, and with the festive season here, Kate, now awaiting the birth of her third child, must know that the days of dreamy country living among crackling fires and wet dogs are gone for good. It will be a wised-up, less idealistic Duke and Duchess who celebrate their seventh Christmas as a married couple.
Amid the merriment and mounting excitement over the new baby, Kate and William have plenty to reflect upon. Nothing stays the same for long in the royal order, and 2018 promises to deliver fresh upheavals that will further complicate the Cambridges’ role. Looming large is the eagerly anticipated royal wedding of William’s younger brother, Prince Harry, to his Hollywood actress girlfriend, Meghan Markle – bringing a new dimension of glamour to the
royal line-up – and the likelihood that the 91-year-old Queen will follow her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, in cutting back her duties.
While Santa will doubtless deliver the goodies to the Cambridge children, Prince George, four, and Princess Charlotte, two, their parents’ wish-list may be harder to realise. William and Kate’s bold aim has been to create an entirely new model of royal life – one that recognises duty and tradition, but allows some semblance of a normal life. Yet, as they have discovered over the past year, the task is harder than it sounds.
Part of the problem is that Kate, despite being the royal family’s biggest star, is relatively little seen by the public. Perfectly good reasons exist for her absences – most recently the chronic morning sickness she suffers from during pregnancy – but her early years as a royal have been dogged by the suspicion that she finds the official side of the job something of a struggle.
In fairness, what commoner wouldn’t? The rigours and obligations of royal duty are a daunting prospect for anyone not born into them. Especially one with the responsibility of a young family. Raised in a well-todo, but otherwise average, middleclass home, Kate is keen that her children will have an upbringing comparable to her own. Crucially, she has converted William to her cause.
The Cambridges’ insistence in recent years on skipping the Queen’s hallowed Christmas Day gathering at Sandringham House for a simpler bash at the home of Kate’s parents is symptomatic of their rebellion. Guests arriving at Sandringham for Christmas are formally greeted by the Master of the Household, led down echoing corridors to their rooms and presented with a handwritten timetable of events. Lunch is served amid the Victorian splendour of the Red Drawing Room, with the table settings arranged in order of seniority. Then, having taken care not to overindulge, everyone retires to watch Her Majesty’s Christmas broadcast.
The big day at the Middletons could hardly be more different. Kate’s sister, Pippa, recently gave a revealing account of what typically happens. “My father has developed this funny tradition of surprising us at some point by appearing in fancy dress,” she wrote in a magazine article. “He buys a new costume each year and typically gets a bit carried away – a couple of Christmases ago he appeared in an inflatable sumo outfit.”
With the likelihood that Harry’s fiancée Meghan will join the Queen’s Christmas gathering for the first time this year, Kate and William may feel more pressure to be present at Sandringham, and forgo the less formal Middleton traditions.
Wherever they choose to spend the day, the celebrations may be more muted for Kate, given her condition. As with her first two pregnancies, she has suffered from hyperemesis gravidarum, an acute form of sickness that affects less than one per cent of expectant mothers. Soon after discovering she was pregnant, she was forced to cancel a month’s scheduled engagements, pull out of a planned trip to Scandinavia and – most distressing to her – miss taking George to his first day at school.
When Kate suddenly re-emerged in mid-October, it was in the improbable company of a life-size Paddington Bear at a children’s event organised by charities supported by William and Harry. Showing no ill-effects and only the slightest sign of a bump, the Duchess performed a lively pas de deux with the bear on a London station platform before boarding a train with the princes and cast members of the forthcoming Paddington 2 film. William, 35, assured reporters that his wife was feeling much better, and it was later officially announced that her baby is expected in April.
The Cambridges – with Harry habitually in tow – excel at this kind of event, where their fondness for children and hands-on enthusiasm for their favoured causes shines through. Watching them at work, it is hard to square their easy-mannered approach (“How are you guys doing?”) with the aloof style of royal patronage of the past. “They’re just super-good at it, and it’s great to see,” says actor Hugh Bonneville, who stars in the new film.
Kate has stepped out several times more over recent weeks, now able to drop George at school, and attending a number of official events for children’s and mental health organisations.
The Duchess’ charity work tends to be underestimated. Partly because when she appears at a function or public event, much of the focus is on how she looks and what she is wearing, but she has taken a key role in the brothers’ flagship mental health charity, Heads Together, and is steadily adding to her portfolio of good works.
Yet there is little doubt that the
Cambridges have entered the mainstream royal fray earlier than they would have wanted. Kate, according to royal observers, would have preferred to remain in Norfolk at least until her family was complete. Anmer Hall, a 10-bedroom, Georgian mansion on the Queen’s estate, was in every sense her perfect home. Charlotte and George were able to romp around the secluded gardens, watched over not only by their parents, but a small, trusted back-up team headed by the royal nanny, Maria Borrello, and prominently featuring Kate’s ebullient, 62-year-old mother, Carole.
Carole has established herself as a powerful presence in the children’s lives, taking them to the beaches on Norfolk’s coast, where William himself played as a toddler, and filling Anmer with what one visitor called “a breeze of affectionate bossiness”.
A country girl at heart, Kate herself has limited fondness for city life.
Raised in Bucklebury (population 2000), a small Berkshire village beside the pretty Chiltern Hills, she went to boarding school at Marlborough on the Wiltshire Downs, and met William at St Andrews University in Scotland – one of the most isolated towns in Britain. After their marriage, the couple lived on the even more remote Isle of Anglesey, off the wild coast of north Wales, where William was stationed with the RAF. The contentment she found in Norfolk, has, by most accounts, only confirmed her sense that she isn’t cut out for city life.
The problem with the Cambridges’ agreeable, out-of-town life was the criticism it attracted from people – including some senior courtiers – that the pair weren’t pulling their weight. Revelations that the Duke was working only 20 hours a week as an air ambulance pilot, while performing a minimal number of official engagements, provoked headlines about “Workshy Wills”, and when Kate, too, was accused of slacking, the now super-slick royal image machine pushed for a rapid response.
“They’re very switched on these days,” says veteran London PR executive Mark Borkowski. “There was a time when the Palace wouldn’t have taken much notice of a few bad headlines, but they really have learned the lessons, and the whole operation has been revolutionised.”
So now, installed in a magnificent four-storey apartment in Kensington Palace, the couple begin their lives as full-time royals. Against this they must offset the challenge of raising three young children in a way that royal children have never been raised before.
Generations of little British princes and princesses have been shaped by stern-faced governesses and tutors in draughty palace nurseries, often having only minimal contact with their parents or other children their age. Duty was their destiny, and William has spoken tellingly of the effect this had on his own father, Charles, the Prince of Wales: “He’s got an insurmountable amount of duty in him,” William told a TV documentary. “He’s just incredibly driven to do his duty, and it’s because that was instilled in him from a very early age.”
For their own offspring, the Cambridges intend to set a very different tone. George is already at a school with a liberal ethos and a mission to produce “conscientious and caring citizens of the world”. There is speculation that he will go on to a mixed-sex secondary school – a royal first. Charlotte is set to follow suit.
The prospect of a new baby adds a further twist to the couple’s determination to be hands-on parents. A recent study published in the US found that a third child represents a huge surge in the levels of stress and responsibility felt by parents – supposedly because the human brain struggles to “think in threes”.
While bringing up their own brood, William and Kate find themselves at
the epicentre of a wider generational shift. One that will have a major effect on their lives in the years ahead. The Queen and her 96-year-old husband – the hardest working royals in history – are deservedly scaling down their workload. Philip has retired, and Charles is expected to take over a number of the Queen’s duties.
But Charles is nudging 70, the oldest heir to the throne for 300 years, and his wife, Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, remains a divisive figure in and out of Court. Increasingly the pressure to keep “The Firm” running smoothly will fall on William and Kate. “An enormous amount depends on them,” agrees former royal press secretary Dickie Arbiter, “but let’s not pretend it will be easy… people have to make allowances and understand that they can’t do everything.”
Help is on the way, though, from a once-unlikely quarter. Kensington Palace confirmed in late November the news the world had been hoping for: the engagement of Prince Harry to his 36-year-old girlfriend Meghan, star of the hit American TV drama Suits. The couple – who have been dating for 16 months – are due to marry next May, soon after Kate’s third baby is due. A wedding and baby are likely to bring a level of royal fervour unseen before.
The much anticipated engagement is good news for Kate – a duchess with Meghan’s celebrity profile in the royal line-up is likely to be of real help. Not only in sharing official duties, but in diluting the frenzied attention Kate still struggles to deal with.
Intriguingly, the new royal baby may smooth Harry’s efforts to make his divorced fiancée more acceptable to a currently sceptical royal establishment. Under revised rules of succession, the Cambridges’ third child will be fifth in line to the throne, pushing Harry down to sixth, and reducing the possibility of there ever being a Queen Meghan.
For now, Kate can do little more than adjust. To living in a palace. To being pregnant again. To creating a role she can cope with, while satisfying a fickle public which sometimes wonders what she does with her time. And to making way for a new sister-in-law.
What she will be doing this Christmas and New Year, beyond the fun and festivities, is reflecting on a year that set her many challenges and ahead to one that will show how she intends to meet them.