In Endgame, Omid Scobie devotes one chapter in two parts to Queen Camilla and the current Princess of Wales. The side-by-side is because these are the only two married-in women who figured out a way to survive the institution – Camilla has survived by keeping the tabloids by her side, and Kate has survived by being as docile and personality-free as possible. While y’all know my feelings on Kate, I will give her begrudging credit for that one thing: she has found a way to survive and balance herself within everyone’s competing agendas. After twelve years of marriage, she’s become such an institutional creature that even the most mild criticisms of her are seen as the most heinous of attacks. Which is where we are now – Scobie actually went pretty easy on Kate, considering the rest of the book, which is why it’s so interesting to see this outsized focus on Scobie’s “scathing attacks” on poor Keen. Some highlights from various British media coverage:
Katie Keen: Kate is said to have earned the nickname “Katie Keen,” according to the author of Finding Freedom, because the palace press office hides her reportedly lower workload by saying she is “keen to learn”. Scobie and claimed the late Queen liked her because she was ‘coachable’ unlike the ‘strong-minded’ Princess Diana. Scobie added that Kate ‘glides under the radar’ because she’s ‘never challenged the system with public struggles or oversized aspirations’. He adds she is ‘comfortable in her role’ and ‘willing to bring the requisite smile and elegance to her duties as princess’.
Kate ignored Meghan: Scobie claims another source told him Kate ‘spent more time talking about Meghan than to her’…He added that Kate ‘watched on in silence’ as stories were published about Meghan making her cry, and that she now ‘shivers’ when her name is brought up. ‘This is a side of Kate that rarely gets written about. Advocating for mental health causes—the mental health of mothers, for that matter—but ignoring her own sister-in-law’s cries for help seemed out of character for someone the public knew as sweet and easy to get along with…At the very least the institution ignored Meghan when she was in pain. It’s a dismal record, and with William now openly claiming his mother was essentially too paranoid to speak the truth, it proves the institution still operates under the principle that women not born into the family are, ultimately, disposable.’Part-time royal: Scobie writes “The late Queen, too, would take off blocks of time throughout the year to recharge, but she was also known to carry out at least three hundred engagements annually. Sources said Kate remains ‘laser focused’ on her duty to the family first, and then the Crown. Where other senior royals are out and about several times a week, meeting people across the length and breadth of the country, Kate has long maintained a smaller work schedule that helped her check off the required royal boxes while saving time for her roles as a mother and a wife.” The new book also claims she “does not plan to increase her workload for 10-15 years” until her children are grown.
Kate & Meghan: While Scobie says the sisters-in-law had “nothing in common” they “could have made things work in those early days if there was peace between the warring Windsor siblings”. Meghan is said to have found her time in the royal household as being “lonely and isolated” and had hoped Kate would be someone she could turn to for a kind word, as they “were once both outsiders, middle-class women brought into the House of Windsor for unimaginably different lives”. But Kate, so Scobie claims, was “uninterested in forming this kind of bond” because “she can be cold if she doesn’t like someone” and “wasn’t a fan of Meghan”.
[From The Sun & The Daily Mail]
There are several royalists being sent out to snort derisively in Scobie’s direction, but it’s curious that no one is mentioning the book’s discussions about how Kate and William have always gone MIA for months at a time, how Kate blatantly began copying Meghan two seconds after H&M got engaged, and how a former staffer even admitted that Meghan’s arrival was like a rocket up the ass for Kate, and that’s why there was all of this Single-White-Female-ing. While all of that – and Kate’s lack of empathy for Meghan – makes it hard to feel sorry for Kate, I do think it’s interesting that this supposedly modern Millennial woman is able to largely glide around with no personality, no causes, no passions. All with that budget wig on her head. Also: it’s so funny to me that Kate is going to put off full-time royal work until all of her kids are in their twenties.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Instar and Backgrid.
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