Countdown to the Royal Wedding - Day 1: Five reasons why Kate Middleton will be a great Princess

In the past it has been difficult to gauge the potential of new members of the Royal Family because they all had to bow to protocol, they were taken from the same class of people (aristocrats and nobility), they behaved in the same manner beforehand, they appeared to have bland personalities that fitted in, and they toed the Royal line meticulously after that, almost like clones.

Kate Middleton appears an entirely different breed. She seems really refreshing and a person in her own right. One cannot see her disappearing behind the Royal facade because she seems pretty confident in herself: her own person. In fact, there are five outstanding things about our Kate which makes her perfect for the new role of Princess that she is about to acquire.



1. Her Personality
She is definitely the People's Princess. She smiles continuously, being happy within herself, so it is not difficult to spot when she is unhappy. She suddenly becomes very serious, her lips purse tightly together and her eyes become bland and unfocused. She clearly likes people in the easy way she treats them and the unselfconsciousness she displays when she is among them. She is most approachable, which puts others at ease and she has a natural warmth that is endearing. She is seen by the media as bringing a "refreshing informality" to the Royal Family. Kate is clearly a winner with the public already.


2. Her Family
All along one gets the feeling that Kate is very close to her family. She spends a lot of time with them, and even William is sharing their house more often too. I would hazard a guess that she is surrounded by love, affection and calm. Her mother and father seem a bulwark against the outside world, despite their fragile look, protecting her every step of the way. One doesn't have to look far to see that both she and her sister, Phillipa, are most valued and are treated that way. This means she has the necessary emotional support to be a bulwark against the rigid, and often detached barriers and structures of the Royal Family, as well as the background to give the Family a softer look in the future.

Kate Middleton's parents: Carol and Michael Middleton.


3. Her Courage
It is clear that Kate does not take any prisoners. She is very courageous in how she acts, especially her treatment of Prince William as an ordinary person. She's not overawed at all by his status, and is very keen to get on with things in her own way too. Nothing seems to phase her. In fact, she appears to be relishing the role of princess-to-be with great enthusiasm, yet without too many airs and graces. In fact, she seems so natural for the part, it's as if she was born to it!



4. Her Background
Kate Middleton's background is solidly middle-class, with a history which includes coal miners and all kinds of skilled craftsmen and women. Her links are with the ordinary people, not a single titled person among her ancestry, which makes her quite unique for a Royal Princess. That fact has endeared her to the public in a very poignant way. She is truly one of them, and they are extra proud of her achievement in crossing the great class divide.


5. Her Empathy and Awareness
Kate appears to have a great deal of empathy, both for Prince William and what he has gone through, and the people she comes in contact with. She is very aware of her environment and what is required of her and she appears to be embracing it with new vigour. Above all the qualities, her sense of awareness makes her very supportive of William and that will be hugely beneficial in the years to come when they assume more responsibilities as a senior Royal couple.



Kate is enjoying the moment that fate has carved for her, and the fact that she has been smiling through it all says a lot about her character, her confidence and her keen sense of awareness in who she is about to be and where she could take that role. She has the twin assets of seeming both ordinary and regal at the same time. She will certainly fit into the Royal Family, on one hand, but her own solid values, her extrovert personality and the love and support she has enjoyed, will ensure that she will be changing that Family as well.

Countdown to the Royal Wedding - Day 4: Has the Public Already Skipped a Generation in the Succession?

As someone who was around to witness the awful events of August 1997, with the death of Diana, Princess of Wales in France, and as a mother, sociologist and former educationist, I have often wondered how her children, William and Harry, would cope with that incredible loss and in such a public way. William, in particular, being the eldest, was very close to his mother, very understanding of her, and rather precocious. Though he was 15 when his mother died, he was a closeted and protected member of the Royal Family, a future king, who would simply have to toe the line in public regarding how he perceived events around his mother, to behave as he was directed. I wondered how he felt on learning of that sudden and incalculable loss and how it would affect his life afterwards. How would he feel towards the mistress that many Britons turned against at the time? Most important, how would it affect his perceptions when he was old enough to be his own man. What would he actually do?

Prince Charles and his wife, the Duchess of Cornwall

Fast forward 14 years to 2011. Prince William is now 29 and is giving a powerful message of his own, relating to his mother, his cherished memories of her and the place he thinks she should occupy in the public memory. It seems quite clearly, that with his own engagement, and marriage on the horizon, William is determined to carve his own niche in the Royal Family (having been the first Royal Prince of such stature to have a rather public relationship with his girlfriend before marriage). He is not only dragging the Family into the 21st century but also re-establishing his mother's place within it without saying a single public word.

The most significant, and seemingly deliberate, thing he has done so far is to offer Kate Middleton his mother's engagement ring as her engagement ring too. That is the most powerful statement of alignment with his mother, and her treatment from his father, that he could possibly make. William could easily have got a brand new, and impressive, ring for his girl - the Royals are not short of a pound or two. But he knew that the minute Diana's engagement ring was given to Kate, the image of Diana would loom large and occupy centre stage in both the public and the press. Diana might be dead, but she will be right in the middle of that wedding on Friday, allowing comparisons to be drawn.

In fact, Prince William, since his engagement, has completely eclipsed his father in the public mind and the media.

Prince William and Kate Middleton


Charles' Dilemma
Prince Charles has never liked being upstaged. He was always resentful of Diana because she was obviously the more beautiful and charming, she was new and exciting, and she was the one the public wanted to see everywhere she went. Being the future king, and a Royal, Charles was not amused because he expected automatic adulation and hero worship. He had been schooled to follow his mother in the glory stakes, and to see his new wife grabbing all the attention was an anathema. Now something worse is happening.

Not once since Charles got married six years ago has the media referred to Charles and Camilla as the 'future king and queen'. Most of the talk around his accession has been mainly concerned with what to do with Camilla, as the public won't accept her as queen, and with many people openly wanting his son to accede to the throne instead. She has gradually improved in stature in the public eye, but the clear discomfort at her being a future queen has been dogging the couple since their wedding.

Charles and Camilla on their wedding day, 2005

Now, to make matters worse, every second word in the press relating to Prince William and Kate Middleton is of them being 'our future king and queen'. That must be galling to Prince Charles who is the next heir to the throne. On top of that, though Charles is Prince of Wales, and had his investiture there, he has never lived there, which has been like an insult to the people of Wales. Yet his son is actually going to set up home there, to live up to his title. Prince William also broke with protocol to spend Easter Sunday with the Middletons instead of with the other Royals at Windsor. Slowly but surely he is proving to be his own man.

The press love the new and the novel, and when that novelty happens to be a future - very handsome, intelligent and eligible - king of England, with an equally beautiful and intelligent young wife at the start of their public journey, untainted and appealing, it simply means little publicity for anyone else, not least for a woman regarded as 'ugly' by the British public and held partly responsible for Diana's demise. Prince Charles would be a very worried man at this moment as the longed-for throne, the one he has already waited 62 years for, recedes further and further into the distance. One is inclined to believe that Charles and Camilla will never see that throne because William and Kate will be on it!

By his mere presence and personality, William is gradually making his father and consort invisible and obsolete. A kind of payback which is almost chilling in its quiet effectiveness. The Queen has signalled a new era of acceptable Royal behaviour, a focus on the future instead of the past, throwing Kate in at the deep end as early as possible so that her transition to Royalty will be seamless after their marriage. During the last five months, Kate has been a princess in all but name, making the wedding a formality.

Charles would love his beloved Camilla to be given the title of future queen and appraised in the same positive way as Kate Middleton at present. But the way the public and press are focusing on the new couple and treating them as the de facto successor to the Queen, shows that they are hungry for something new and wholesome, and it isn't a King Charles or a Queen Camilla! The most recent poll revealed only a 14% support for Charles and Camilla on the throne. Considering the attention the William and Kate will now attract in everything they do, and the unfavourable comparisons with his father that will emerge, what an interesting future it promises to be as the stakes get infinitely higher!

Countdown to Britain's Royal Wedding - Day 6: The National Mood

On Friday 29 April (celebrated as public holiday), just under a week from today, the second in line to the British throne, Prince William of Wales, will be married to Catherine Middleton, affectionately known as Kate, in Westminster Abbey. They met at St Andrews University in Scotland, where they were both students nearly eight years ago, and have been in each other's company ever since, just like any other normal couple. Except, they couldn't be more exclusive, being our future king and queen.

Kate Middleton will go to bed a commoner on Thursday night, without even any aristocratic pedigree or links behind her, unlike past commoners, and wake up a Princess of the Realm, at the highest level, taking precedence in rank over the rest of the Royal family except for the Queen, Prince Philip, Prince Charles, the Duchess of Cornwall and William. That's one fantastic transformation in the history of our country. Unlike Princess Diana, who could claim all kinds of connection to royalty and who was the daughter of an earl in her own right, Kate Middleton is a commoner in every sense of the word as we know it, yet with the obvious bearing, sensitivity, charm and charisma to fall naturally into the role of a royal princess. As someone as educated and articulate as her fiance, and who shared the same student world for some years, she will bring a fresh perspective to her role as a new princess.

The nation certainly approves of William's bride. But there is something different in the air about this royal wedding which is unlike any other: a mixture of anticipation, resignation and clear apathy. The country is in an economic turmoil and while, on one hand, there is a lot of joy and goodwill for the couple, and some anticipation of being part of the big day and its pageantry (a kind of welcome distraction from our troubles), the excitement of the occasion is definitely lacking, the souvenirs are not selling as much, and the resignation to the event is almost palpable to feel. For example, in my home town in Berkshire, a natural conservative base with royal leanings, there isn't a single event marking the wedding on Friday. Yet, with Charles and Diana, there were street parties everywhere to involve the nation in a spirit of communal celebration. People are definitely happy for the couple, but the happiness is muted for a variety of reasons, four in particular.



1. These are hard economic times with many businesses complaining that they can hardly find the money to pay staff for being off work for yet another public holiday, and also that the wedding will rob them of attention and patronage from clients. With the wedding holiday being added to the Easter and May 1 bank holidays, it makes the next week particularly disruptive for businesses.

2. William and Kate have been almost living together since they met, so the ceremony is really just a rubber stamp on a de-facto situation. It doesn't carry the mystery and awe of past royal weddings when brides had to be virgins and not have cavorted with anyone else!

3. The changing status of the Royal Family does not carry the loyalty, attention and support from the British public that it once did. Most of the Family is seen as irrelevant to British life in these times. Many people are likely to be complaining about the potential cost of the wedding than wanting to see the wedding, especially if they are suffering economic hardship now too.

4. While many of the public would like to see the succession skip a generation and go straight to William on the Queen's death, they know that William will have to wait quite a while after his father, so that takes some excitement out of the wedding itself.

So, altogether, the national mood does not really welcome a royal wedding and there is no noticeable dancing in the streets because of it. Instead, there is fear and insecurity in the air, which has engendered a deeper kind of resignation that the event is going to happen anyway, so we might as well all make the most of it. Furthermore, the couple are likeable in their own right, they promise something different for the country's future, and so it would be a little churlish not to wish them well for their big day.