Middleton doesn’t talk to the press, the official mouthpieces for the British royal family say as little as possible about her, and the prince himself says even less. The blank slate that is Kate is a real impediment for those who write the first draft of history, but an open goal for the ravenous and fact-light London tabloids. Thus, the tabs treat with characteristic irreverence the ill-sourced rumors that Wills and Kate are secretly engaged to be married—rumors that are roundly denied by equally ill-sourced “friends of the couple.” Asks one: IS KATE GOING TO COP A RING?
Who knows? That’s the best answer. But all bets are off—literally. The British bookmaking firm William Hill is so certain William will pop the question that it has stopped taking bets on the eventuality; it takes gambles only on the date. With equal loving attention to detail, Woolworths has commissioned Wills-and-Kate commemorative plates.
But there’s a very serious side to this new Diana business, as Middleton learned this week on her 25th birthday. Yesterday morning, Second Lt. William Wales—a.k.a. Prince William, 24, recently graduated from the Sandhurst military academy—was believed to be ensconced with his military regiment, the Blues and Royals of the Household Cavalry, near Windsor Castle (proprietor: his grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II). Middleton was 20 or so miles away, leaving her Chelsea apartment to go to work—she’s an accessories buyer for the tasteful but middlebrow clothing chain Jigsaw—where she encountered a locusts’ nest of paparazzi. With painstaking decorum, she made her way to her VW Golf and drove off.
No harm done. Still, the images from what should have been a day of celebration for Middleton were haunting. The London Evening Standard prominently juxtaposed two photographs: a 1981 shot of a shy Diana, newly betrothed to Prince Charles, stepping into her auto amid a scrum of photographers. And then the image this week of Kate, gamely cheerful, climbing into her car, in the face of a wall of paps, with their updated digital-camera gear and high-tech foul-weather clothing. Snap. Lunge. Snap. Lunge. Is this to be Middleton’s life? Diana’s death has been inquested beyond remorse. Just last December an exhaustive inquiry rubbished the idea that there was any conspiracy, official or unofficial, behind her death by accident in a Paris tunnel. Which is exactly what most of the world supposed, even though many blamed the accident on the horde of photographers chasing her.
Now comes Middleton, hounded by a new generation of paparazzi, themselves salivating at the notion that an exclusive bikini-clad Kate could bring up to £25,000 (more than $48,000) for a single snap. In Britain, as Diana found out, to be treated as a princess is less a blessing than a nightmare. Already, the photographers have become such a ubiquitous presence in her life that her lawyers (who also happen to be the prince’s) are examining legal methods of restraint. Meanwhile, Middleton has police protection when she leaves for work and there is speculation she will be given a permanent bodyguard. “Prince William is angry and upset by the paparazzi pursuit of Miss Middleton and wants it to stop,” a spokesperson for the prince told NEWSWEEK.
Sure, some things are easier this time around. When 19-year-old Diana got engaged to Charles, much was made of her innocence and virginity. Catherine Elizabeth Middleton, born in 1982 in Reading, Berkshire, (the same town as actress Kate Winslet) is the product of a more permissive era. Few eyebrows seem to have been raised about the fact that she and William shared digs with other friends after meeting when both were students at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. Nor does there seem to be any moral outrage over reports that the prince frequently stays overnight at her upscale apartment in Chelsea, also Diana’s neighborhood before she married Charles.
Middleton, who has been quoted as saying that William is, “lucky to be going out with me,” reportedly gets along well with Prince Charles and is understood to have the queen’s approval. The young woman has been invited on family ski trips to Klosters with Prince Charles and other royal family members and spent quiet weekends with William on his grandmother’s Scottish estate in Balmoral. Though the couple had one famous spat at a polo match in 2004, they have seemingly been able to weather the subsequent storms. “I guess that it is pretty serious and it could be a lifetime relationship,” says Penny Junor, Charles’s biographer. “My understanding is that William is absolutely adamant that Kate is what he wants.”
By all accounts, Middleton is striving to be a normal person, and to be treated as such. However, the birthday scrum of photographers made it clear just how tricky a business dating a royal can be. So far, she seems to be avoiding some of the pitfalls that plagued the late Princess of Wales. Middleton has avoided embarrassing photos of the kind that showed the young Diana in a transparent skirt, and lately seems to have hired stylists to spruce up her somewhat conservative dress style. But it’s clear that neither she nor William have much say in how they’re treated by the nation. “There seems,” says Richard Kay, a correspondent with the Daily Mail, who was also a confidant of Diana, “to be a sense of inevitability that is outside of their control.”
