Over the weekend, the Mail’s Becky English had a big exclusive about the year to come for the Princess of Wales. The 2025 plans for Kate have been briefed extensively for months, and by that I mean that Kensington Palace has repeatedly drilled it into royal reporters’ briefings that Kate will not be “back to work” for some time, if ever. Ingrid Seward put her own spin on those palace briefings, suggesting that Kate sees her role now as just child-rearing and preparing her kids for their future roles. There’s a sense that Kate feels some creeping terror at the thought of royal work, and there’s also a sense that Prince William, King Charles and Queen Camilla simply want Kate to be a background character from now on. Well, the Telegraph’s Hannah Furness also got the “birthday briefing” about Kate. Some highlights:
Kate’s birthday plans: As she turns 43 today, her world looks mercifully different. After a birthday breakfast with her children at their Windsor home and the school run, she will probably join Prince William to walk their dog Orla as usual before a family celebration in the evening.
Plans for events in the months to come: There is no “big reset button that’s going to be pressed” because of the turn of a new year into 2025 or a birthday, said a Palace source. But her slow return will continue. The Princess’s team at Kensington Palace is making plans for engagements, expected to include a welcome resuming of her public work on early years childhood in the not too distant future.
Staying cancer-free: Sources emphasise that the Princess’s “unwavering commitment to duty and service” has not changed with illness, but that her own words in September are the ones to pay attention to. “Doing what I can to stay cancer free is now my focus,” she said then. “Although I have finished chemotherapy, my path to healing and full recovery is long and I must continue to take each day as it comes.”
Do it right once: The idea, though no one at the palace quite expresses it this way, is to do it once and get it [right]. For the Princess to thrive in a decades-long job in the public eye, she must have the chance to fully recover now. As the months since her chemotherapy ended have passed, that has meant swimming, re-emerging at school events and children’s sports clubs, and – as she has said so many times before – spending time outside in nature.
William & Kate don’t want to be king and queen: The coming year will see big decisions on Prince George’s future schooling, with visits to public schools around Windsor and London already under way ready for his move in 2026, with his two younger siblings to follow. Then there has been the matter of the King’s own cancer, and what it could have meant for Prince William and Catherine as a future King and Queen who did not want the roles for many years to come.
Kate won’t travel overseas: She will not join the Prince on a short spring overseas tour, it is understood, but will aim for key public moments just as she did last year, with the addition of some “ordinary” engagements too. The Princess will also continue with the recent pattern of using video messages and signed statements to speak directly to the public, it is said. Just as she has lost so much, it appears, she has found a new way to use her voice. “What you’ve seen from the Princess of Wales has been her speaking directly and sharing her journey with the public,” says a source. “I can see that trajectory continuing. Her using her voice to share her own story was extremely powerful.”
I’m trying to think if I’ve ever seen any other 40-something woman be so coddled and infantilized. This is the way it’s always been with Kate, even before her mysterious medical situations, and I have to imagine that the people around her treat her similarly too – like she’s a child who has to be managed and indulged. There’s also a piece of news here, that Kate will not travel. We assumed that, but Becky English sort of left it open in her piece over the weekend, that if Kate felt “well enough,” she would join William on a trip or tour. Now the courtiers are saying “of course not, who would do the school run??”
New birthday photo! I’ll let y’all discuss if there’s any Photoshop involved.
Photos courtesy of Cover Images and Matt Porteous for Kensington Palace.
