If Kate Middleton is
suffering similar jitters as the TV towers rise on the Mall, she may take heart
from the example of the Queen Mother, supposedly the last "commoner"
to marry a man who would be king. For all the hyperbole of the royal wedding tearing
asunder Britain's rigid class system – Middleton's first 13 years were spent
living in a semi-detached house! Her great-great-grandfather was a coalminer!
Her uncle is a ne'er-do-well! – there is plenty that is unique about the bride
and the recognisably modern relationship that her wedding will celebrate.
Defenders of our hereditary monarchy aver that one of its
great strengths is that we know exactly where our kings and queens come from –
we have watched them grow up, unlike politicians who arrive with an act in
place and skeletons shoved firmly in closets. Kate, or Catherine, as she is
known by her family and her pre-university friends, is different. In the final
hectic days before her marriage to William in front of a billion or more
observers, she is still almost completely unknown. Despite books, documentaries
and column miles devoted to her, she has given just one short interview, with
William, on the day of her engagement. What are her qualities? What sort of
consort to the future king will she be? What public role will she play? And how
will she cope with our scrutiny?
Look back into anyone's life and you can identify wry
coincidences and apparently prophetic events. Myths and legends already swirl
around Kate that suggest this royal romance was meant to be, despite her
isolation from the aristocracy. She was born at the Royal Berkshire hospital in
Reading on 9 January 1982, the first child of Carole and Michael, who met while
she was a flight attendant and he was a steward with British Airways. Kate went
to the local village primary school until Carole's thriving new business, Party
Pieces, enabled the Middletons to pay for Kate, her younger sister, Pippa, and
brother, James, to enjoy an upper-class-style schooling at private
establishments.
Tall for her age, Kate excelled at sport after joining St
Andrew's school in Pangbourne, Berkshire. She was in the crowd one day when Prince William, then
nine, visited to play hockey. Kate also enjoyed drama and starred in a number
of plays including one Victorian melodrama in which she fell in love with a
handsome, wealthy gentleman called William, who proposed marriage. (The
denouement is less auspicious: Kate's character and her child are cruelly
abandoned by the ungallant William.) Another legend from Kate's childhood was
that she stuck a poster of the prince on her wall while boarding at Marlborough
school as a teenager. Kate insists it was the Levi jeans guy instead but this
legend endures because it buttresses another myth – that Kate's supposedly
ambitious social climbing mother urged her to go to St Andrews University after
her gap year just to snare the prince.
Accounts of Middleton as a young woman are uniformly
pleasant. No one speaks ill of her, privately or publicly. Middleton is
described as intelligent (she got a 2:1 in history of art at university) but
not goody-goody, and beautiful without being full of herself. The childhood
incident that has attracted greatest scrutiny, however, is her abrupt switch
from Downe House school to Marlborough, aged 14, which convincing reports
ascribe to bullying. The only old school friend from Marlborough who has talked
at length, Jessica Hay, said Middleton was bullied because she was perceived
"as quite a soft and nice person". The headteacher of Downe House at
the time denied Middleton was badly bullied although conceded the
"catty" atmosphere may have left her feeling "like a fish out of
water".
This bullying seemed significant when it was revealed that
one of Kate and William's wedding charities was Beatbullying. Middleton could
find a compelling role in the future tackling bullying issues but Prince
William's staff at Clarence House downplay this. The couple chose 26 different
wedding charities "to reflect interests that were close to both of their
hearts" says an aide.
Perhaps more can be gleaned of Middleton's personality and
passions from the present day. Here, the absence of information is telling.
Royal historian Hugo Vickers is amazed by the lack of leaks about the wedding.
"It's just so calm and discreet. It's like the Kremlin," he says.
When Sarah Ferguson was getting married to Prince Andrew her ex-boyfriends came
out of the woodwork; Kate's only confirmed ex is invited to the wedding and has
said nothing.
The couple are surrounded by a professional press operation.
But royal sources insist that the lack of stories about Middleton is down to
Kate and William themselves. "The couple are genuinely incomparable. They
are one of the most high-profile couples in the world and yet you don't know
what they do in their private life, how they spend their time, what they enjoy,
who their friends are," says an aide. "There's a reason for that –
they are surrounded by an incredibly loyal group of friends who have never once
spoken yet."
False stories
This "vow of silence" has always been William's
way of doing things, says the aide; the prince's way of finding a normal life
"inside the bubble". While celebrity couples are surrounded by
"friends" who plant stories in the press, William and Kate have
ensured their real friends say nothing about them. It is said William used to
pass false stories to friends to test them. "They are very single-minded
about their life together," says the aide. Privately William is
characterised as being strong-willed and knowing his own mind. "And
Catherine does as well. They are cut from the same cloth in that respect,"
says the aide. "She's a very strong woman. You'd have to be."
There are ample reserves of sympathy for William and Harry
after the tragedy that blighted their childhood and some people welcome the
fact that William's marriage, after seven years of cohabitation
(inconceivable at the start of the Queen's reign), is so different from his
father's nuptials with Diana. Kate, too, is very different from Diana: almost
10 years older and the first future queen to have a degree.
"She's older, she's better educated and comes from an
ordinary family," observes Judy Wade, Hello!'s wise royal correspondent.
"Diana came from a broken home – Kate doesn't."
Diana, Fergie and even Sophie Wessex all visibly changed and
grew into their royal roles. "Kate is already there. She's got her act in
place," says Vickers. Public duties are deceptively difficult and the
history of royal pratfalls is long in the modern media age. In the runup to the
wedding, Kate has performed public engagements near the home she and William
share in Anglesey, and in Lancashire and St Andrews, and royal watchers are
impressed with her poise and self-assurance. "When she first came out at
the engagement she was a bit overwhelmed by it all," says Chris Jackson,
Getty's royal photographer. "Since then she's obviously had some training
... because there was definitely a change when she visited the Anglesey
lifeboat station."
"You'd expect her to be shy but no, very
confident," says royal photographer Mark Stewart. "When Kate got out
of that car in Wales it was like she had been doing it all her life."
A successful royal partner needs more than fickle press
approval, however. There is also the Firm, and its staff. Camilla has
apparently remarked, "We are so lucky to have her," but is Middleton
well-liked by more humble members of the royal household? "Massively
so," says one aide. "What you see in public is what you get in
private – very warm, very kind, very thoughtful, sensitive, very down-to-earth,
very intelligent."
But then again, warns Wade, every newcomer to the palace is
feted at first. "She needs to be streetwise – Coronation streetwise. A
final word of warning – be very careful of fake sheikhs."
Royal aides say you can infer plenty about Middleton's
personality from the royal wedding. It is said that Charles and Diana were only
permitted to invite a handful of guests each among the 3,000 dignitaries at
their wedding in 1981. Kate and William have personally invited more than
1,000. Middleton has chosen the music (she has a knowledgeable passion for
classical music) and everything "from carriages to canapes" says the
aide. "She has taken a lead on all the things that have a creative input
and has stamped her mark on it."
As well as being sporty, Middleton is a keen photographer
("not just happy snaps, pretty decent stuff which could be displayed in a
gallery" claims a royal source) and paints watercolours. Her unspectacular
career at Jigsaw and then at Party Pieces, where she was responsible for the
website and catalogue, has at least demonstrated her interest in design,
marketing and fashion.
Middleton dresses herself "without any advice or input
from the palace," according to the royal source, and her style has
attracted attention around the world. Salons in New York have reported
customers asking for "a Kate" cut and her preppy look is credited
with inspiring a Sloane revival.
The scale of the global interest in the royal couple – and
the pressure that brings – is bigger than ever before. There is predictably
intense interest in America – NBC alone is sending 250 journalists to cover the
wedding – but also in unexpected places, such as China and Eastern Europe.
"The world is after them," says the publisher John Blake, who has
sold rights to his publishing house's two Middleton books around the world.
"Everybody is interested. Diana was unique and such a creature of her
time. Kate is more of a girl next door but her soap opera is only just
beginning."
Popular expectations
A soap opera ... can Kate cope? "The nickname she was
given, Waity Katy, sums up her strength," says royal historian Robert
Lacey, who likens her – favourably – not to Diana or the Queen Mother but to
Prince Philip; like the Duke of Edinburgh, Middleton understands hers must be a
supporting role. "Willingness to take second place is a very important
attribute of being a royal consort. That's something you never felt Diana took
on board."
A modest, subordinate role might suit the monarchy but will
it fulfil popular expectations? Won't Middleton need to take on a more dynamic
role to be a popular modern woman in the future? "It's important to
understand them as a couple rather than two individuals," says a
spokesperson for Clarence House. "He's a search and rescue pilot and he'll
be that until 2013, based in Anglesey. Their life will be in Anglesey."
Middleton is expected to develop links to charities that fit with "her two
big developing areas of interest" – the arts and sport – but at first they
will only carry out royal engagements together. "Their intention is for
the first couple of years of marriage they conduct their public life together
so that Catherine will begin to learn the ropes as to how to conduct herself.
And they want to be able to support each other too," says the
spokesperson.
"She's going to die of boredom in Anglesey,"
predicts Wade, who is also fearful of the gruelling 12-week tour of Canada that
Middleton will be dispatched on six weeks after her wedding. The planes at 5am,
the crowds, the pressure to look gorgeous all the time: "It's going to be
a shock for her," she says.
Safe, dutiful and not another Diana; isn't there a danger that
a bored Kate will bore the public? William has a reputation for being
adventurous on royal tours and the press desperately hope the couple will prove
to be active and interesting. "Hopefully they won't just be planting
trees," says Jackson.
"If they are to any degree boring that's quite a good
thing. Better to be boring than to be showbusiness," argues Vickers.
"It's much better when they are plodding around doing their duties than
when they are going to parties in Hollywood or Palm Beach polo matches."
After her day watched by the world, Catherine Middleton is
unlikely to be a very different person from the Kate of today – and we are
unlikely to know her any better. As well as William's personal determination to
have a private life, the royal family knows that in an era of celebrity their
"mystery and mystique" is part of their "enduring appeal",
as one member of the household puts it. "She's got the rest of her life to
be known. She'll be known through the work that she does as much as anything
she says. Members of the royal family are not celebrities. They don't have to
covet publicity," says the aide.
"They are both children of the celebrity era. You see
that in their self-assurance in front of cameras and ability to appear natural,
which is a modern accomplishment," says Lace. "But retaining the
privacy of their souls is a wiser and more important attribute. You can see how
William learned this through bitter experience but Kate seems to have got it as
well."