Kate Middleton, more 'real' than ever when she turns 38
The Duchess of Cambridge celebrates her anniversary installed in her position in the royal family with the support of Queen Elizabeth and the support of the public, who recognize her role
The secret of television as a public relations weapon is not in reaching the largest number of viewers, but in finding the right type of audience. Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge and wife of Prince William, turns 38 this Thursday. He will celebrate them in the best of his moments, with a general consensus that he has found his role in this world, but in a delicate situation for the royal family due to the recent announcement of his brothers-in-law, Henry of England and Meghan Markle, who have decided "step back as members of the Royal Family" to forge a new role in which they will be financially independent. Despite the Duke and Duchess of Sussex once again in the spotlight of all Britons, including Queen Elizabeth II, they did not want to miss the opportunity to congratulate Kate Middleton through social networks.
Guillermo and Kate's marriage closed 2019 with their participation in a special BBC Christmas program: A Berry Royal Christmas. The idolized British cook, Mary Berry, accompanied the couple in some of their many philanthropic activities, cooked with them for a selected group of volunteers from those charitable organizations and spoke hand-in-hand with both in an atmosphere of imposed intimacy in which They confessed that their third son, Luis, loves the beets they grow in their own garden; that Prince William does not misbehave when it comes to preparing the family breakfast and that, in college days in St. Andrews, Scotland, he tried to impress his future wife with a palatable Bolognese sauce.
There was a time when Kate became the mockery of the British tabloid press. In the years before she became the Duchess of Cambridge, she was called “Waity Katie,” [Kate, waiting] because of the time it took her college boyfriend to propose to her. They referred to her as a commoner [commoner], and questioned her nerves in public, her shrill voice, and her boring wardrobe. Years of eccentricity and exoticism in which the model was Lady Di had created a generation of outrageous tabloid monarchists and easy tears in which a conservative, conventional and anodyne character was not listed. Paradoxical, if one takes into account that it was precisely those virtues that ensured that Queen Elizabeth II did not lose an iota of esteem among her subjects.
It is true that the wedding of William and Kate, on April 29, 2011, brought together a million onlookers around Westminster Abbey, and that 26 million British people glued to their screens to watch the television event of the decade in the UK. There was a desire for pomp and circumstance after the years of scandals, doubts and ups and downs that filled the gap between the marriage ceremony of Charles of England and Diana Spencer and this new royal marriage.
Kate Middleton's reinvention has been slow but steady. In the conservative imaginary, as with Lady Di, the speed with which the required offspring began to arrive helped. Jorge, six years old, became the third in line to the throne. Two years later, Carlota (a clone of her grandmother, experts say) and finally Luis arrived. The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge stuck to the diffuse role that corresponded to them in that no-man's-land that involves waiting until their reign. Elizabeth II barely had time to fill in that time. Her son, the future King Charles of England, aged 70, has been making and undoing plans for decades to renew a modern monarchy that has not yet arrived, although it is increasingly imminent.
Guillermo and Kate have limited themselves to participating in charitable events, promoting popular causes such as raising awareness of mental health problems in the population, traveling on behalf of the United Kingdom when commissioned by Buckingham Palace (their tour of Pakistan last year it was a perfect PR machine) and to convey a modern, serene and compact family image that has comforted many royalists. Lady Di, Prince Henry or even Prince Andrew, with their frivolities, excesses and mistakes, are the reflection of the true British character. Elizabeth II, and now the marriage of Guillermo and Kate, are the mirror in which some still aspire to continue contemplating themselves.
Her nemesis
And as always, the emergence of a nemesis has helped this evolution: Meghan Markle, the mixed-race American actress who married Prince Harry and has become the new target for the British tabloid press. Everything is comparisons between the character, style, wardrobe and institutional role of these two women. And Kate Middleton, simply with the ability to never get out of the pot at any time, has the upper hand. He even allows himself to have some gesture of rapprochement with his sister-in-law to try to straighten the relations of The Firm - The Company, as the Royal Family is usually known - with this new addition to which the media have already granted the status of misguided.
In her 2019 Christmas speech, Elizabeth II chose three photos to decorate the desk from which she addressed the British at her Balmoral residence. Carlos de Inglaterra and Camila Parker Bowles, with the serenity of age and reconciliation with the public; George VI, the queen's father and accidental monarch who during World War II won the affection of the country; and in the middle, in a postcard photo, the Dukes of Cambridge and their three sons. Due to the arrangement of the frames and the light of the stage, Kate Middleton occupied the radiant center of this group of members of the British royalty who make up the true essence of an institutional network whose main and only mission is to reinvent itself at all times to survive.
