Kate: A Queen in the making 

As Kate marks her 39th birthday this weekend, Hannah Betts looks back at the decade that saw Miss Middleton become a Royal force to be reckoned with

Yesterday, the Duchess of Cambridge turned 39. In April, she will celebrate her tenth wedding anniversary, 20 years after she and her husband became friends at the University of St Andrews. Most of us experience our 30s as a period of change. However, for the woman who started this decade as a middle-class girl from Bucklebury filling in time at her parents’ business, and ends it as a national campaigner and future queen, the evolution has been seismic – and played out on a global stage.

On that fairy-tale wedding day on 29 April 2011, 29-year-old Kate Middleton walked down the aisle a commoner to emerge a royal ingénue, wary in her new role and frequently looking rather terrified. A decade on, she has not only done her dynastic duty in providing The Firm with the requisite heir and not one but two spares, she’s forged a role as a key – and confident – royal player.

As a confirmation of her new-found status, in 2017 the Queen presented the Duchess with the Royal Family Order of Queen Elizabeth II, an honour only given to certain female members of the Royal Family. In 2019, Kate was promoted to the highest female rank in the Royal Victorian Order (awarded by the Queen to people who have served the Royal Family) – that of Dame Grand Cross. These public shows of respect appear to have given Kate the seal of approval she was waiting for. Since then she has stepped ever more assertively into the public eye.

Last year alone, she’s launched her Early Years campaign, clapped for carers, hosted virtual bingo, spearheaded the National Portrait Gallery’s ‘Hold Still’ project, overseen her offspring interviewing Sir David Attenborough and travelled the country on a morale-boosting train trip. All the while caring for three young children, and coping with a husband and in-laws suffering from Covid.

After Buckingham Palace was bombed during the Second World War, the Queen Mother famously declared that she could now look the East End in the eye. Today, her great granddaughter-in-law could claim the same after facing down Covid. Naturally, she has done so from a large degree of privilege, during a pandemic that has struck the underprivileged full force. However, this does not negate her efforts, nor the gratitude the public has felt for them.

Queen Mother biographer Hugo Vickers, whose latest books lead the charge against inaccuracies in the Netflix TV series The Crown, observes: ‘Initially, all the Duchess had to do was smile sweetly, dress beautifully and be a lovely mother. However, the pandemic has necessitated the Queen and Prince Charles spending time in isolation, and Kate has 100 per cent stepped up. We have begun to hear her speak, and speak very well. The Royal Family always has a place – but particularly in times of crisis – and Kate has been sensational: reassuring us, helping us and cheering us up.’

She has been tested and revealed to have a cool but compassionate head in a crisis, in a way that bodes well for her future roles first as Princess of Wales, and later as Queen. Where once she faced accusations of laziness – initially during her years as ‘Waity Katy’, then as a new parent – the Duchess has proven herself invaluable (Weighty Katy, if you will), as slow but steady in her approach as her role model the Queen. Like Her Majesty, the Duchess is robust in her work ethic. Her Early Years support mission, launched last November, is intended to be her ‘legacy’ project, in the way that Prince Charles has championed the environment, and Diana, Princess of Wales was associated with Aids. Her interest in this issue preceded having children; it was born of her decade-long involvement with charities such as Family Action, Action on Addiction and the Anna Freud Centre, which taught her that infant experiences are linked to success and failure in later life.

As with Kate, William and Harry’s Heads Together project (conceived by Kate), which changed public attitudes towards mental health, the Duchess is trying to change the conversation about the role childhood plays in adulthood. Her aim is ambitious: putting early years development on a par with the other great challenges we face as a society.

Katie Nicholl, royal correspondent for Vanity Fair and author of the definitive biography of the Duchess, Kate: The Future Queen, says: ‘Kate is the personification of dedication to duty. As she nears her tenth wedding anniversary, she’s finding her voice and becoming a fully fledged member of the Royal Family. From now on, she’s going to be seen – and heard – differently. ‘It’s taken a decade for her to find her feet. Like the Queen, she’s careful, cautious, not like Meghan. For a long time, she toed the line and, in doing what was expected of her, was criticised by the likes of Booker Prize winning novelist Hilary Mantel. She was portrayed as a Stepford Wife. But all the time she was quietly plotting for this moment. Her Early Years project is not just for now, but the rest of her life; her raison d’être. I’ve spoken to mental-health specialists, neurologists and teachers, who say she is now an expert in her own right.’

The Duchess takes motherhood seriously, but executes what she has learnt with ease. Her pregnancies appear well-planned. She gave birth to Prince George when she was 31, to Princess Charlotte when she was 33, and to Prince Louis at 36. She gives every appearance of being a wonderful mother, without making Diana’s song and dance about it. Where the Queen is the Duchess’s professional role model, so her mother Carole is her parental inspiration. The Cambridge brood are said to be well-mannered, while allowed to be themselves. Neighbours near the Cambridges’ Norfolk home regularly spot Kate and her charges digging on the beach, our future queen never looking happier.

Happiness is very much the point. Kate and William were friends before they became lovers, and this friendship becomes ever more palpable as their marriage enters its second decade. Observers note the way in which the pair – while not being theatrically clingy – are naturally tactile once the cameras switch off. They’re the kind of couple who finish each other’s sentences. If Kate did once idolise her spouse – she’s rumoured to have had a poster of him on her wall, and applied to St Andrews in the hope of snaring him – then she now sees him right-sized – a partner rather than a prince.

This sense of partnership had never been more apparent than during 2020, the year of so-called ‘Megxit’, when the ‘Fab Four’ became the ‘Dutiful Two’. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s January announcement that they would be stepping back as senior royals put the focus on the remaining brother and his wife. The timing of the official Sussex departure – shortly after Britain went into lockdown – also highlighted

a sense that, while Meghan and Harry targeted their ambitions at the world stage during this difficult time, William and Kate were content to keep their focus on Britain. Critics go further, pointing out that Meghan largely confined herself to a ‘me, me, me’ agenda (new agents, Netflix deals, and a tell-all biography that some believe she must have collaborated on), whereas Kate’s engagements have been about others, not herself.

Whatever the truth of this, the Duchess of Cambridge’s efforts have reminded this writer, for one, of the Queen Mother, branded by Hitler as ‘the most dangerous woman in Europe’, such was her uplifting effect on the wartime mood. Like Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, as the Queen Mother was formerly known, Kate has been instrumental in holding together both the Royal Family and the nation during a difficult and divisive year, showing every sign of becoming a vital power behind the throne. There is charm, but there is also grit. Meanwhile, qualities that might once have been seen as bland are today viewed as steady, rock-like – the stuff of which dynasties are made.

Diana may have been proud of her ordinary touch; Kate is ordinary – one of us who now happens to be one of them. Slowly, steadily, this commoner who will one day be Queen is changing the Royal Family, not with a flouncing ‘my way or the highway’ attitude, but by making her influence felt in an example of soft – and extremely strategic – power. In doing so, the Duchess has found not only her voice – herself, even – but her look. Where once she dressed too young for her role, then too old for it, so, in her late 30s, she acquired a globally recognisable chic. Royal fashion expert Bethan Holt, author of The Duchess of Cambridge: A Decade of Modern Royal Style, says: ‘I’m not sure any observer in the early 2010s could have predicted that by 2021, Kate would be combining classic regal style with of-the-moment trends she’d made her own, but she’s managed it.

‘In her early 30s, she might have been in a comfort zone – a rut, even – from which she could feasibly never emerge: all those tea dresses and beige heels. Maybe there was fear that too much, too soon would backfire. Great style makes a splash, so the decision to hold back on the fashion front until the Cambridges grew into their roles was a masterstroke.

‘Now she is comfortable in the limelight, she has the signature look to match. When you think of hairbands,

pussy-bow blouses and glitzy cocktail dresses, it’s Kate who comes to mind as their poster woman – quite a feat in a world crammed with influencers and celebrities. I love that you’d still use lots of the same words to describe Kate’s look now and then – ladylike, elegant, demure – but today it has this cool, confident twist that’s made her more exciting, without ever veering into clothes-horse territory.’

Royal dressing is a fine line, and Kate has elegantly traversed it. As she celebrates her 39th birthday, she can afford to be uncharacteristically self-satisfied.

She entered her 30s a girl; she leaves them a woman who both knows – and has very much earned – her place. As Katie Nicholl notes: ‘The lineage is secure, the future looks positive, and a lot of that is down to Kate. The Queen has every confidence that the future of the monarchy can work and will work, and feels it will be safe in William – with his wife by his side.’

 Up close and personal

Tears, blushes and blurting out ‘I’m speechless!’ – how it really feels to meet the Duchess, by the people who have 

‘Despite her fame and family, she shares the same worries as us’   

The Mail on Sunday’s royal editor Emily Andrews (below) has watched Kate blossom over the past ten years. ‘Are you sure? Do you really think it suits me? I was a little hesitant.’ That was the surprising but endearingly honest reply when I complimented our future Queen on her new hairstyle. It was more than five years ago, after she’d had Princess Charlotte, that Kate debuted a new ‘mum fringe’ (pictured below right). The most photographed – and photogenic – woman on the planet had had her hair cut, but even she was a little unsure.

She patted her hair and smiled gratefully as I reassured her that, yes, the new ‘do’ did indeed look fabulous. It was an intriguing insight that, despite her position, wealth, fame and gorgeous family, she shared the same worries and doubts as the rest of us.

And that, I think, is what has cemented the Duchess of Cambridge’s unassailable position as the linchpin of the modern Royal Family. She allows just enough daylight into her life, gives just enough to make her seem ‘one of us’, yet she is not.

Or rather, she was. Once. Now marriage to Prince William gives her both a worldwide platform to effect change on whatever issue she chooses (plus unlimited dresses and jewels) but also the unstinting glare of the media spotlight.

I first met Kate, or Catherine as she prefers to be called now, just after the Royal Wedding in 2011. Self-assured and extremely amusing in private (she has a wicked sense of humour), in public she initially seemed to struggle with nerves.

Call it what you will: stage-fright, weight of expectation, never wanting to put an LK Bennett-shod foot wrong. The former Miss Middleton did not want to mess up, and that gave her a somewhat hesitant public persona.

Public speaking did not come easily to her. She had voice coaching which resulted in strangled vowels (sorry, Kate). She was criticised for taking her time. Not taking on too much in terms of either royal engagements or patronages. Was she, some whispered, just a teensy bit boring?

I remember in 2014 watching her stumble over her words at the National Portrait Gallery, as she gave a rare speech. Later that year in Sydney, she made a touching and emotional speech at a children’s hospice, yet continually looked to her husband for reassurance.

When, I wondered, would she find her metaphorical feet? For many women, motherhood can be a challenging time. Exciting, nerve-racking, alienating, isolating in the extreme. But for Kate it seemed to be the making of her. I realise that may sound slightly sexist, but it’s not.

Being a successful mother, and providing three heirs to the British throne, galvanised her public confidence and has left her much more assured in what she wants to do and where she wants to go. Yes, in her eyes, her most important job is parent to George, Charlotte and Louis. But that success has given her much-needed confidence in her public role. Her interest in children’s early years began long before she was a mum. She was the brains behind the Royal Foundation’s mental health initiative Heads Together and now she wants to see a generational shift in how the nation brings up its children. Seeing her today, comfortable and confident in her role as a senior royal, I have no doubt that the Duchess is finally stepping into the spotlight.

 ‘She really listened’  

Kyla Lethbridge, 15, from Hertfordshire met the Duchess in 2015 when Kate visited children’s mental health unit Acorn Lodge where Kyla was an inpatient.

At the time I was nine years old and had been at Acorn Lodge for about a month. I have ADHD and was suffering from various mental-health issues, including depression. A week before we met Kate, we did an exercise where we wrote letters to her. At the time she was pregnant with Princess Charlotte, so I remember writing that I wished her well with the baby.

A week later, our headteacher came into the unit and told us that we would be meeting Kate that day. We didn’t believe him at first – then about an hour later she walked in. Most people were silent, but I was the first to say something. I think I said, ‘I’m speechless!’ She talked to us for quite a while – or rather she listened to us. There were about ten of us in the class, with a mix of mental-health problems. She seemed to understand what we were going through.

At the time I was prone to violent outbursts, but there was something about her presence that was calming. I knew I had to be on my best behaviour: she is royalty, after all. But that day, she didn’t seem like it – she was so down-to-earth.

After we’d chatted, she had a photo taken with everyone – I’ve still got mine (above). I was grateful that she’d taken time out of her busy life to spend it with us. It made me feel like there was hope. Knowing that there are good people who are willing to talk made me look on the bright side at a time when things were tough. I’ll always remember that.

‘She saw my daughter and said, “I love babies! I wish I could hold her”’

Morgan Cassius, 29, from London, met the Duchess last September at an event in Battersea Park that was part of Kate’s advocacy for early years support. Morgan was invited by Mush, an app for mothers, that she had started using shortly after her daughter was born in March last year.

I’d put my daughter Makena-Grace in the cutest outfit but, 20 minutes before the Duchess arrived, she’d made a mess of it and I’d had to change her. So at that point I wasn’t really worried about anything else going wrong!

When Kate walked towards us her reaction to Makena-Grace was so natural and instinctive. She saw her and smiled, then said to me, ‘I love babies! I wish I could hold her but obviously [because of Covid] I can’t.’

She took her sunglasses off and showed them to Makena-Grace while we were talking and, throughout our conversation, it felt as if she was genuinely interested in my experiences, and wanted to know the answers.

We talked about how I’d expected my maternity leave to be and what it had actually been like because of the pandemic. And also about how the one upside of it had been the extra time that my husband had been able to spend with me and our daughter.

‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘We mustn’t forget the dads. They need time and support, too.’

She’s really passionate about provision for new mothers and children. I never felt like I was talking to someone who had just put their name to something.

 ‘The first thing I noticed was her warm smile’  

Jacqui Thompson, 54, from Nottingham, met the Duchess in November 2011 when she gave a speech at a fundraising dinner held by the Cambridges in aid of the National Memorial Arboretum. Her husband Gary – a senior aircraftman with the Royal Auxiliary Air Force, who was killed in Afghanistan in 2008 – is one of thousands of service people remembered there.

I could never have imagined I’d be giving a speech in front of the Duchess of Cambridge, but after I lost my husband I got a lot of help from the RAF Benevolent Fund, so I started fundraising for them, and, through them, for the National Memorial Arboretum.

It didn’t really hit me until I got there and I saw the Duke and Duchess walking towards us. She looked stunning in a silver one-shouldered dress (below) – the gown was wonderful.

I was introduced to her and one of the first things I noticed was her warm smile. When she says, ‘It’s nice to meet you’, you really feel like it’s genuine. We talked about Gary and about the Arboretum. When she asked me how I felt about making a speech, I told her I was terrified. She touched me on the arm and said, ‘You’ll be wonderful.’

At dinner I was sitting opposite her but it was one of those large tables that you couldn’t speak across. I tried not to stare but every time I sneaked a look she always had a smile on her face.

I have a daughter the same age as her and having met her I feel very protective towards her. I see her at these events, meeting people and I just know what a difference she makes. I’m in awe of her.

 ‘It felt as though we shared a moment’  

Rebecca Binstock, 49, from Hertfordshire, met Kate in October 2011, when she accompanied her father Lionel to a charity dinner at Clarence House. The event was meant to be hosted by Prince Charles, but at the last minute Kate stepped in as her father-in-law had to go to a funeral. It was her first solo engagement after marrying Prince William in April that year.

It wasn’t until we got to Clarence House and the doorman told us he had ‘a bit of news’ that we found out we’d be meeting Kate. It was a very intimate event – only around 30 people – so she made her way around the room, speaking to everyone before dinner.

She didn’t seem nervous, but not nearly as self-assured and relaxed as she now seems when you see her at public events. She kept blushing slightly, in the same way that Princess Diana used to, and I remember that striking me at the time. In person she’s so beautiful – she has an almost ethereal quality.

When she got to us, I complimented her on how stunning her wedding dress was. In July that year it had been put on display at Buckingham Palace, and she admitted she had been overwhelmed by the response to the gown. ‘I thought it would only be there for a day or so, but everyone wants to see it,’ she said.

My father can be a little eccentric. I can’t remember what he said to her, but she kept catching my eye when he was talking. It felt as if we had one of those shared moments that you get at a party when someone is trying to extricate themselves… fortunately one of her aides intervened and moved her along!

Kate’s most magical moments

She was 29 when she married William. A decade on, the couple and their three children embody the new Royal Family 

 ‘Kate was a queen in a past life’

Kate’s astrology chart – where the placements of the planets at the time of our birth can explain why we act in certain ways – reveals that there is plenty of depth below the surface, says astrologer Carolyne Faulkner. But what does it all mean for Kate’s future?

Born on 9 January 1982, the Duchess’s star sign is Capricorn. This is the traditional sign of royalty as it is ruled by the planet Saturn, known as ‘the Queen of the Stars’.

This isn’t the only element which indicates that Kate is innately royal. Her chart also shows she is Capricorn in her South Node placement, which astrologers believe is indicative of both where we have come from and past soul memories. If you believe in reincarnation, as I do, then it’s fair to say that Kate was likely a queen in a past life – which may explain why she is professional, dignified and seemingly unfazed by either becoming a member of the Royal Family or the demands of public life.

Planetary movement in March 2010 meant that she managed to overcome insecurities about her role within the family. Simultaneously, Jupiter (which gives us the opportunity to progress) helped her expand her reach and confidence. Since then, her role has steadily increased, both as a public figure and the wife of the future king.

But there’s more in store for Kate, who has three placements (Mercury, Venus and the Part of Fortune) all in Aquarius – the sign tasked with raising awareness and serving humanity. These placements show that her work as a humanitarian is innate, rather than stemming from a drive for public affection. Her service and charity work is far stronger than her need to be number one.

Aquarius placements also push people to unite and think like a community, as seen in Kate’s work with children. Highlighting that the first five years of life are key to helping all children, parents and carers will change the way we raise future generations.

The tail end of last year saw us moving into the Age of Aquarius (a new astrological age) where changes are afoot! Kate’s recent work is just the beginning: she will make a huge impact by raising awareness and using her power as a tremendous force for good.

For more information on Carolyne’s work, visit dynamicastrology.com

Shining through a difficult year 

Kate kept calm and carried elegantly on during 2020. YOU’s fashion editor Sophie Dearden talks us through her key looks