Thursday, 28 Mar 2024

Royal romance: How Queen’s example inspired William and Kate

The Queen has reigned for 68 years and in that time has weathered good times and bad to retain great popularity and admiration. Now that Prince William and Kate are stepping up to ever-increasingly more senior royal duties, many commentators have noted how the couple are looking to the past to ensure continuity and success in their royal roles. Although Kate grew up in a normal middle class family, a world away from the Queen’s own upbringing, the way William introduced the Duchess of Cambridge to the pressures of royal life owes a great deal to the Queen’s example.

Royal biographer Penny Junor, in her 2005 book “The Firm”, takes a look at how the Queen emerged into the spotlight as a young woman.

Ms Junor writes: “The young Elizabeth’s personality was both her handicap and her saviour.

“It may have prevented her from moving monarchy forward in the early years, but it also prevented her from believing her own publicity. 

“It would have been very easy to let the adulation go to her head; to take it personally, as Diana 30 years later did. 

“The Queen never fell into that trap.

“She has always managed to differentiate between the public persona and the private one. 

“In public she is Queen, Head of State, Supreme Governor of the Church of England, an office she has the privilege to hold by virtue of her birth. 

“Privately she is a wife, mother and rather doting grandmother, with a passion for dogs, horses, the countryside and traditional country sports. 

“With Diana there was no such demarcation; there had been no long preparation for a public role in life. 

“Since the age of ten the Queen had been aware of the future that lay ahead and her education was tailored to that end. 

“Diana started seeing the Prince of Wales in the summer of 1980; she was young [and] unceremoniously thrust into the limelight.

“Less than a year later, she had become one of the most famous faces in the world. 

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“The Queen was used to the cameras, used to the publicity, used to being the centre of attention.

“Diana was not.”

William and Kate’s romance moved slowly, with the media famously giving Kate the sobriquet “Waity Katie” during their ten-year courtship. 

In their 2010 engagement interview, William said: “I wanted to give her a chance to see in and back out if she needed to before it all got too much.

“I just wanted to give her the best chance to settle in and to see what happens on the other side.”

According to veteran royal editor Robert Jobson, the prince even used strategies to shield Kate from the harsh glare of publicity early on in their relationship.

In 2005, William famously made some off-hand remarks that seems to indicate that he was not serious about the then-Miss Middleton.

He told a reporter: “Look, I’m only 22 for God’s sake.

“I am too young to marry at my age. I don’t want to get married until I am at least 28 or maybe 30.”

However, Mr Jobson writes: “William is no fool. The denial of any serious thoughts of marriage blurted out so apparently carelessly was, in fact, a smokescreen designed to cool the media frenzy about William’s steady girlfriend.

“It was for show; a way of dampening down speculation about him and Kate; a way of protecting her from the press.”

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