Hear the words “royal bride” and I’m assuming we all immediately conjure the same image: An immaculately well-bred woman with a pedigree that predates the Norman Conquest.
(That bloody Frenchie William and his expansionist notions.)
A woman who has grown up in some stately pile where the genteelly leaking roof might drip on the occasional Holbein and flatulent ancient labradors stumbling about the place.
A woman who can bag a pheasant and an earl’s son on the same day without once dropping her drink and a woman totally bereft of anything so dull as professional ambition.
Prince William, to his eternal credit, was having none of it.
This Monday will mark 13 years since he wed middle-class university graduate Kate Middleton, officially marking her transition from Bucklebury convenience store regular (Haribo sweets were a particular favorite) to future Queen.
(Haribo sweets, I’m assuming, are still a particular favorite. In fact, that shop’s owners Hash and Chan Shingadia were invited to the wedding.)
But have we fundamentally misunderstood, mislabeled and mistaken what Kate is really about?
And not just us but Prince Harry the Duke of Sussex too?
Harry spent the royal wedding day in 2011 seeming totally enamored with his incoming sister-in-law, grinning and looking like a man with a generous hip flask concealed somewhere on his person.
A decade and a bit later and he was singing a very different tune.
In December 2022 the Duke popped up on TV screens to suggest to the world that the Waleses’ rose-tinted romance and all the “happily ever after” froth wasn’t a case of love conquering all but of weak-kneed capitulation and of pragmatism winning out.
“I think for so many people in the family, especially obviously the men, there can be a temptation or an urge to marry someone who would fit the mold as opposed to somebody who you perhaps are destined to be with,” Harry told the Netflix cameras.
“The difference between making decisions with your head or your heart. And my mum certainly made most of her decisions, if not all of them, from her heart. And I am my mother’s son.”
Golly gosh darn – whoever could the duke have been talking about?
Could the implication be that the Duke of Sussex had followed his heart all the way to Meghan and her authentic self while “Willy” had essentially caved and wed a woman who “fit the mold” and wouldn’t mind spending her Thursdays forever more in Bermondsey opening new rec centers?
At the time that Harry & Meghan came out, while this particular “mold” declaration of Harry’s got some media pick up, it also got lost in the wash of the stream of other revelations and clangers from the couple’s singing-for-their-supper series.
But as we approach the Waleses’ wedding anniversary, we need to talk about how the wild, weird events of 2024 so far have proven the extent to which Kate cannot be written off as some mold-fitting docile popsy.
The thing is, Kate looks like a Good Girl.
She has the wavy, bouncy hair, the nice wardrobe, and she has never once thought “f**k it” and gone out on the lash with sister Pippa using the Duchy of Cornwall Amex.
Somehow the princess has managed the extraordinary feat of not once in her 4748 days (truly) of royaling to look bored senseless while making chitchat with retirees holding small flags in regional market town squares.
Kudos.
However, you know what they say about appearances.
Harry might have seemingly written-off Kate with his Netflix “mold” comment but the Princess of Wales has turned out to be something of a surprise package.
Famed Australian essayist Charmian Clift talked about her work representing “sneaky little revolutions” and I think that phrase perfectly sums up the Princess of Wales’ approach to her royal life.
Consider the fact that, right now, the Princess has not made an official public appearance in more than four months besides releasing her truly shocking March video revealing she has cancer.
The royal diktat goes, duty first. Health, relationships, personal wellbeing, sanity and parenting are all meant to come second to the grinding, onerous drumbeat of royal work.
Yet this year Kate, wholly with the support of William, has put her recovery and her family ahead of the dreaded d-word.
For centuries, to be a woman who married into the royal family required a complete and utter sublimation of one’s own needs, desires and identity for the greater monarchical good.
Kate has firmly but entirely rejected this, prioritizing herself and her kids ahead of the needs of the institution.
Ditto the actual work that the Princess of Wales does in normal times.
Sure she and William are not entirely off the hook for the occasional hospital wing ribbon-cutting but they have both discreetly chucked in the traditional royal model of them doing charity by turning up with the national media every so often.
The Waleses, in the last few years, clearly thought “sod it” and decided to actually do the work and to change the world themselves, which is they now have the Princess’s Early Years Foundation, the Prince’s Earthshot Prize and the homelessness initiative Homewards.
Quietly doing away with a century-old royal doctrine?
Revolutionary, I tell you.
(Marx and Engels might have a different read, I’ll grant you.)
And there are other ways that Kate has, again and again, shrugged off any suggestion that she might neatly twist and contort herself to squeeze into a particular mould.
For example, reportedly one of the reasons the family moved to Windsor’s Adelaide Cottage was so that Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis would not grow up cosseted by the privilege and luxury of Kensington Palace and got used to having their fish fingers served via silver salver.
Or the fact that Kate’s kids attend a co-ed day school.
(George turns 11 in July. By that age both William and Harry had been boarding at all-boys outfits for years.)
Or even things like, no other princess before has made a habit of quotidian things such as taking her children to shop at discount chain Homebase or packing them sandwiches in plastic lunch boxes to be eaten out of the boot of the car or having them, including a future king, help unpack Waitrose deliveries.
My point is, Kate has charted her own course with increasing confidence and a refreshing lack of traceability.
On some fronts, yes, the princess has wholly assimilated to royal ways but on the points that matter she set her own course and quietly just did what is right for her.
Harry might have seemingly obliquely disparaged both Kate and William with his “mold” line but I think we can say that the Princess of Wales has defied this particularly belittling label.
Viva la sneaky little revolutions.
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.