The Commoner’s Touch
She wasn’t born into royalty, but Kate Middleton appears to have been born for it.
Poor Queen. She’s been having a hell of a rough ride. First, Meghan and Harry trash her family in front of the entire world. Then she loses her husband of 74 years and has to sit alone at his funeral. For two years, she’s watched helplessly as her country battled through the Covid crisis, then catches a bout of it herself. This month, she coughed up to help her son Andrew finally put his sex-trafficking scandal to rest.
True to form, her Maj perseveres, chin up, without complaint. Like a Timex watch, she takes a lickin’ and keeps on tickin.’ Still, as time runs out on her reign, it must come as a relief that she can soon pass along that heavy crown to the next sucker.
For the British public, it’s a drag that the next sucker is Prince Charles. A majority of Brits want to skip over him entirely and see his eldest, Prince William, leapfrog onto the Throne. But the public doesn’t get a say and when the Queen dies, Charles’ ascension is all but ensured.
Charles’ lack of popularity must be a bitter pill for the Queen. The British Royal Family exists at the pleasure of its subjects and adoration is key to survival. As luck would have it, she has an ace up her sleeve—a reliable stand-in to uphold traditional values while presenting as modern and approachable. If anyone can restore the Royal Family’s tarnished mystique, it’s Kate Middleton.
Charles might be heir to the Throne but Kate is heir to the Queen. She is scandal-free, looks and dresses princessy and never says anything controversial. Like the Queen herself, she’s dignified, duty-bound and reliable. She even had the good sense to produce a male heir out of the gate, unlike that trouble-maker Ann Boleyn. Talk about luck. No wonder the Queen looks so happy. I feel like she’ll turn at any moment, smack Kate on the knee, pinch her cheek and say ‘it’s you and me, kid.’
How funny then—how very hilarious—given Kate’s spectacular success as a prominent new member of the Royal Household, that if certain snippy, la-di-da wardens of the royal Old Guard got their way, she never would have made it by security. According to royal author Christopher Andersen, Camilla was one of those supercilious gatekeepers.
Andersen reports Camilla felt the Middleton family lacked requisite breeding—something about Kate’s mother Carol Middleton’s stint as an airline hostess. By the time the Big Wedding rolled around in 2011, royal gossips whispered that Carol was a grasping, modern-day Mrs. Bennet of Pride and Prejudice, angling to push her daughters into the path of England’s most eligible bachelors.
Rumor has it relations between Kate and Camilla have been strained ever since. Judging by this picture, Camilla looks ready to cut a bitch.
Those expressions! Camilla’s: I see you. Kate’s: what of it?
Camilla: Watch yourself, girl. I know about your coal miner grandfather and your mother the airline hostess and not even for British Airways!
Kate: Calm down Karen. Your husband talks to plants and lectures the peasants about carbon footprints from his bio-fueled Aston Martin. Have you seen the polls? Nobody wants a climate crank for a king. They want William—my husband.
The Queen, wisely, appears to be staying out of it. Far be it for her to ever get in the way of any marriage, ever again. She’s been down that road not once but twice and both times it ended in disaster. First when she—pardon the expression—cock-blocked Captain Peter Townsend, the dashing young war hero in hot pursuit of her late sister Princess Margaret. The second when she helped arrange a ‘suitable’ marriage for Charles but cruelly left out mentioning the ‘arranged’ part to Diana.
In the aftermath, Margaret sunk into a trivial, gin-soaked, nicotine-stained existence, married to a man she didn’t love and possibly hated, surrounded by sycophants and gossips. We all know how the Diana story ended.
Her Maj possibly suspected the Royal Family needs Kate more than Kate needs the Royal Family and worried things could go the other way. I could even imagine her seeking assurances from her private secretary…
‘Did you explain the demands of the job clearly and precisely?
‘Yes Your Majesty.’
‘You told her about the regimented schedule and hundreds of stultifying charity appearances a year?’
‘Indeed.’
“You mentioned the mind-numbing small talk? The 24/7 surveillance? The fickle support of the public?’
‘I have m’am.’
‘You told her pantyhose are highly suggested, even while on tour in Africa?’
‘Yes ‘m’am , she’s been apprised.’
‘Well then… let’s get on with it before she changes her mind.’
Judging by history, someone should tell Camilla “aristocratic ancestry” doesn’t guarantee success when it comes to joining the Royal Household. Sarah Ferguson was of noble extraction. A descendent of King Charles II and distantly related to Andrew through their common ancestor the Duke of Devonshire, she was noble in blood but not always in behaviour. In the years since marrying Prince Andrew, she was…
—photographed with her toes in her lover’s (not her husband’s!) mouth.
—filmed accepting an envelope of cash in exchange for access to the Royal Family.
—bailed out financially by her husband’s dead pedo friend Jeffrey Epstein.
Which of these two royals looks more royal to you?
Judging by Season 4 of The Crown, the queen is all too aware of the downside of birthright. In Episode 4, in a series of ‘quality time’ rendez-vous with her four kids, she discovers Charles to be self-pitying and solipsistic, Anne bitterly jealous of Diana’s attention and trapped in a miserable marriage, Andrew every bit the degenerate and loose cannon he has proved to be these last few years and Edward a bullied weakling who turns bully himself. It’s not pretty.
If she’s watched HBO’s Succession, I imagine she saw a little of herself in Logan Roy, the cantankerous media tycoon in the twilight of his command over a vast media empire and looking to choose a successor from among his worthless brood—four children whose best qualities combined still don’t add up to his fierce leadership acumen. Not even close.
Too bad Logan Roy’s fictional. Otherwise, these two could share drinks and war stories—reminisce about the empires they built so meticulously, if at times ruthlessly. Eventually they would land on the subject of their children and how the prospect of ending their careers would be so much more pleasant knowing they were placing the keys to their respective kingdoms in more capable hands. At which point, the Queen would remember she needn’t worry. Not with Kate Middleton waiting in the wings.
In the middle of a vile and horrifying research trip, I watched that wedding over and over again. She is so soothing and without her, the Windsors would be under ceaseless attack. Plus, she must torture that woke tramp so hard, it is a beautiful thing in itself
You forgot to mention that Charles has a penchant for cylindrical cotton thing-a-ma-gigs with strings:) Great article all the same.