When the late Queen passed away in 2022, the same endless parade of adjectives were trotted out again and again to describe her: Steadfast, tireless, devoted, dutiful, constant.
All the sorts of words you bring out to deceive a 19th century general or a good horse. Queens are meant to be exactly that, stately and dignified, national figureheads and symbols of unity. But sexy? Saucy? A discernible bit of all right?
Never.
Aside from Anne Boleyn managing to use her feminine wiles to attract the attention of a gouty Henry VIII, a man who was never known as ‘hot stuff’, the women who end up sitting on thrones are not women famed for exhibiting even a skerrick of sexuality.
Thus today, lords, ladies, and good news.com.au readers I give you … KATE. Ta da!
Note the time and the date because we have just witnessed the first future Queen of Great Britain and Northern Ireland who can officially be described as dishy – and not afraid to show. (What’s that? Feminism wants my membership card back? For reducing a woman to her sexual desirability?)
The royal family is currently knee-deep in the South Korean State Visit, an event I know we have all marked in our diaries with thick red pens. These outings, you see, involve, standing, polite pointing, polite smiling, polite small talk and polite posing. (They tend to look so soporific I wouldn’t be surprised if Queen Camilla had needed a Red Bull to even remain upright and alert.)
State visits are generally events so leaden and predictable that certain royal reporters could practically file their copy a full 24-hours in advance and just head down the pub.
Except for the fact that this time ‘round, the Princess of Wales has chucked whatever dog-eared whiskey -stained rule book she might have inherited right out the window and left it to mulder in the rhododendrons.
Instead Kate has just put more leg on display than we’ve seen her do since about the time of the release of the first iPhone.
The British press corps are all probably currently having a much needed sit down to recover from the shock.
Things started when Kate and man-in-suit Prince William, the Prince of Wales went off to do their duty and to meet President Yoon Suk Yeol and his wife Kim Keon Hee at their hotel, a role previously performed by Charles and Camilla when they were the Prince and Princess of Wales.
From there, the group travelled to Horse Guards Parade for the ceremonial welcome at which point the flowing, crimson cape chosen by Kate proved not to be quite so demure and restrained a garment as one might think. Instead as she mounted the steps, it parted to reveal that yes, indeed, HRHs have legs. Damn good ones too.
Kim Kardashian and her derrière might have broken the internet in 2014, but I’d wager that Kate and her pins might come close today.
Not only did the princess choose to reveal she does indeed possess rudimentary body parts, but her surprisingly modern look also made it clear was busy breaking the late Queen’s golden rule of wearing hose.
For much of the past 12 years, we have generally seen the 41-year-old wheel out a truly shocking number of pairs of hideous flesh coloured tights, her vibe somewhere between trad wife and Mormon.
However all those horrible pairs of hose would seem to have been thoroughly binned. HALLE-BLOODY-LUJAH. (I personally hope that Kate and her dresser Natasha Archer had some sort of symbolic burning of all of them in a 44 gallon drum in the Kensington Palace forecourt, a gloriously pagan celebration of the princess’ emancipation from her nylon prison.)
So, these new photos of Kate…. I think we can all agree with the powerful and erudite sentiment of William circa 2002 when he saw the princess walking in a student fashion
show, “Wow, Kate’s hot.”
However, there’s more going on here than meets the eye. Indeed, Kate’s unusually and conspicuously alluring look can tell us a lot about how things stand 15 months into her run as the Princess of Wales.
Call it the knee bellwether – the more outré or out of the ordinary the princess’ look, the more she seems to be coming into her own.
Long gone is the shy, retiring Kate who often dressed looked like a ‘50s throwback. Instead, we are now seeing a woman who is openly embracing grander and more dramatic looks, and seems to have started taking much more pleasure in her wardrobe.
Nothing about Kate and her cape (Little red riding princess?) was designed to melt into the background or to not stand out.
Here we have proof positive that the mother-of-three has grown entirely comfortable in her elevated role. Really, I suppose, it comes down to confidence – confidence that she can be herself and dress how she wants rather than devotedly hewing to the fustier standards of old.
Moreover, the fact she busted out this new look right smack dab in front of King Charles and Queen Camilla, suggests that His Majesty is absolutely fine with his daughter-in-law ushering in a more modern (albeit minutely more modern) version of royalty.
It goes beyond her wardrobe. Ask yourself, how long has it been since any of us saw Kate pottering off to unveil a plaque? Cut a ribbon? Christen a ship? Any of the traditional royal outings of yore?
Instead what has become the Kate status quo is to see the princess striding off in her panoply of rainbow pants suits like a C-suite executive on the make as she pursues her
ambitious vision for the Royal Foundation’s Centre for Early Childhood.
Only last week Kate convened the first national symposium organised by the Centre, which drew an auditorium full of big-name academics, thinkers and scientists, including from Harvard. At the event, the princess unveiled the results of an global survey which involved 110 experts drawn from 21 counties, the whole thing a testament to her global convening power.
As her spokesperson said, according to the Telegraph, “This is the next level. This is the blueprint for how she will think about the future of her work.” And Charles? He clearly thinks his daughter-in-law is doing a bang-up job, as evidenced by the fact the princess debuted a new tiara, unseen in public in nearly a century, at Tuesday
night’s state banquet.
Other jobs might come with performance bonuses; HRHing comes with performance diadems. (The divvying up of the jewels in the royal family vault is entirely at the discretion of the monarch.)
For the white tie event, the Princess of Wales donned a Jenny Packham number, the Diamond Frame earrings (which had been lent to her by the late Queen) and the Strathmore Rose tiara. It’s a meaningful piece for all your jewel buffs out there, which was given to the Queen Mother, then Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon by her father, the Earl of Strathmore, to mark her 1923 marriage to the Duke of York, late George VI.
Even North Korea firing a few missiles about the place during the first day of the State visit couldn’t ruin what has so far been a top-notch exercise in international diplomacy and professional standing around.
Bring on day two when the polite nodding will really reach its zenith! And who knows, we might even see Kate’s elbows.
Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.