Royal Courtiers Kept Kate Middleton From Feeling ‘Isolated and Lonely’ Like Princess Diana, Expert Says
The last thing the royal family wants is another scandal like the one with Princess Diana.
Sure, they tried to distance themselves from the situation and never took the blame for Prince Charles’s disastrous marriage to Diana. But the fact remains that the British royal family’s image suffered after the Princess of Wales died. Queen Elizabeth worked way too long repairing that fragile reputatuion to let it happen again.
With Diana’s experience in mind, royal courtiers carefully handled Prince William’s intended spouse, Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, from the beginning.
Kate Middleton was always close to her family
One trait that attracted Prince William to Kate was how close she was with her family. He adored going over to the Middleton house and enjoying the normalcy of family dinners and hanging out together, which is something he missed in his own broken family.
There was a good chance that Kate would have stayed close with her parents even without extra effort. But royal courtiers were determined to make sure she never felt alone, even after stepping up as the Duchess of Cambridge.
Royal courtiers didn’t want Kate Middleton to lose touch with loved ones
Diana was close with her family before marrying Prince Charles too, but those relationships suffered once she became a royal bride. These feelings of isolation and feeling like she couldn’t trust anyone led to some of Diana’s misery.
“I think very much there is a feeling in the Palace that they want to learn from the mistakes of the past and didn’t want a royal bride who felt isolated and lonely and cut off from her family and miserable,” royal commentator Katie Nicholl said during the ITV documentary, Kate: The Making of a Modern Queen (via Marie Claire).
“Because that has happened before and they didn’t want a repeat of Diana.”
Prince William made sure Kate Middleton was happy
The Duke of Cambridge experienced his mother’s unhappiness firsthand and likely wouldn’t have let it get that bad with his wife. But the first safeguards were the courtiers learning from their past mistakes.
“I definitely think courtiers were determined that Kate should marry into the family feeling as comfortable as possible,” Nicholl continued. “And I just don’t think William was going to take any chances ‒ I mean, he adores the Middletons. He has a very close relationship with Michael and with Carole, so he also did not want them to be sidelined as soon as Kate married into the family.”
The Middletons remain involved in their daughter’s life
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge maintain a busy schedule even now during quarantine. However, they make time to see the Middletons and make sure they have a relationship with their three grandchildren. That’s the way Kate was raised and exactly what Prince William envisioned for his future family.
Kate has her late mother-in-law’s poise and beauty. But one thing they don’t share, thankfully, is the feeling of isolation that comes from being an outsider in the royal family.
