Did picture perfect Kate steal King’s limelight?
ECLIPSED by the popularity of his first wife Princess Diana, does King Charles now face reigning under the shadow of his daughter-in-law?
I ask only because some courtiers were alarmed that our monarch’s first appearance at the Chelsea Flower Show as King was almost lost amid the extensive coverage of the Princess of Wales’s attendance on the same day.
‘With his love of horticulture, His Majesty’s appearance at Chelsea was an important engagement,’ one royal source tells me. ‘It’s a shame that his visit with Her Majesty the Queen received less coverage than might have been expected. I hope they are not too disappointed.’
The King and Queen presented a medal in memory of Queen Elizabeth to leading lights of gardening. Catherine, meanwhile, met youngsters from ten schools taking part in the RHS Campaign for School Gardening.
Prince Harry claimed in his memoirs, Spare, that he and Prince William were restricted in how many public engagements they could undertake.
He wrote: ‘Pa and Camilla didn’t like Willy and Kate drawing attention away from them or their causes. They’d openly scolded Willy about it many times.’
Harry refers to one occasion when Catherine was scheduled to undertake an engagement at a tennis club on the same day that Charles and Camilla were due to appear elsewhere at an official event.
This had been strictly prohibited, Harry explained, because such a ‘fetching’ photo would ruin Charles and Camilla’s chances of being on the front page of the papers the following day. He said: ‘That couldn’t be tolerated.
‘Told that it was too late to cancel the visit, Pa’s press officer warned: “Just make sure the Duchess doesn’t hold a tennis racquet in any of the photos.”’