Over the weekend, the Mail published the first excerpts from Catherine Mayer’s new book, Divide & Rule. One excerpt is about the Princess of Wales, and one is about Meghan. Mayer isn’t a Meghan hater, but she’s not really a Meghan defender either. It was clear why, as I read the excerpt on Kate – Mayer thinks Kate is doing a brilliant job overall, and Mayer is a true-blue believer in Project Keen. As in, everything Kate does and says deserves grace, even when Kate has shown her true colors over and over again. And with all side-by-side comparisons of Meghan and Kate, the Kate defenders never really want to acknowledge the elephant in the room, which is that the Wales marriage is much, much different than the Sussex marriage. One marriage is based on true love. The other is… not. Some highlights:
So long, Fab Four: Only a few years ago that burden looked set to be shared. Both Kate and Meghan – along with their husbands dubbed the ‘Fab Four’ – were hailed as young superstars capable of revitalising the Windsor brand. Then, with astonishing speed, things fell apart. Today, the royal ranks are fractured and depleted. Amid controversies and with the former prince Andrew enmeshed in scandal, support for the monarchy is dwindling in the UK, especially among younger populations, while overseas realms are heading for the exit.
Cracks in Kate’s armor: Meghan said Kate had made her cry during a disagreement over bridesmaids dresses and not, as widely reported, the other way round. Harry’s memoir, Spare, painted his sister-in-law as painfully brittle, impervious to Meghan’s charm and ‘on edge’ over being ‘compared to, and forced [by the media], to compete with’ the newcomer. He describes Kate gripping her seat so tightly that her fingers turn white as she demands an apology from Meghan for ascribing a moment of forgetfulness to ‘baby brain’. ‘We’re not close enough for you to talk about my hormones,’ she admonishes. If Kate is tempted to put up fences, it is easy to understand why.
Facing down Hurricane Meghan: Her media management looks majestic given the headwinds she has faced down since ‘Hurricane Meghan’ blew in. Both women swiftly found themselves defined against each other, polarised and polarising, with Kate accused of racism by Meghan’s fans. But who knows where Kate might stand in public affection had there been no such squalls?
Drab & Lazy: Because the truth is, Kate’s life in the public eye has never been plain sailing. She has been criticised as boring, drab and workshy. A running complaint that dogged the Cambridges in the early years of their marriage was their perceived failure to do their bit for the family firm.
Kate’s never been eager to talk about art, despite studying it at university: Might the speculation about Kate’s choices in higher education have some basis in fact after all? Until this moment, I had dismissed gossip about how she came to enrol on the same course as William at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. Kate took A levels in Art and Mathematics, netting top marks in both. Her grades guaranteed her place to read Art History at the University of Edinburgh, her first choice. Then, inexplicably, she decided to take a gap year, spending part of it in Chile with Raleigh International, missing Prince William by weeks. He had revealed his plans in a television interview. A revision to her universities application form then pitched her into unprecedented competition to study Art History at St Andrews. Widely considered less prestigious than the Edinburgh course, this programme was now suddenly and wildly oversubscribed, with applications spiking by 44 per cent on the news that William would be among its next intake.
Stalker Kate: ‘The Middletons must have discussed and supported the gamble their daughter was taking in full knowledge of the Prince William dimension,’ observed royal author Robert Lacey. ‘What other rationale could there have been for this last-minute swerve?’ I provide some answers to that question in my book. Her long courtship with William – they duly met at St Andrew’s in 2001 and got engaged in 2010 – was, said the prince, ‘to give her a chance to see in and to back out if she needed to before it all got too much.’ Unlike most other royal fiancées, including Meghan, Kate understood a good deal about the life she was agreeing to lead. That is not the same thing as being protected from its downsides however.
Kate’s cancer-free video in 2024: Kate, the Art History graduate, has watched the analogue shots fired by palace press teams glancing off the incoming barrage of digital deepfakes like arrows hitting a tank. So she has brought updated weapons to the fray, fighting deception not with dry facts but hyper-emotive content.
As I said, it’s the eagerness to give Kate grace, regardless of how often Kate shows her true colors. The biggest problem for Kate’s defenders (Mayer among them) is that in the past five years or so, the mask slipped in several ways. We saw in real time how Kate treated Meghan, how Kate pushed racist narratives about Meghan, and how Kate stood back and allowed a pregnant woman to be scapegoated. Prince Harry barely even discussed Kate in Spare, but what he did write about her gave a real glimpse into her uptight, melodramatic, mean-girl personality. Even the most generous royal biographers can’t escape the fact that Kate and her family stalked William and did everything they could to keep him ensnared. If Mayer doesn’t even discuss the 2024 Frankenphoto, I’m going to completely dismiss this book as just more Waity propaganda.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.
