Kensington Palace released new-to-us images of the Duchess of Cambridge over the weekend. The photos were some advanced promotion for Kate’s garden, or should I say her “show garden” at this year’s Chelsea Flower Show. The Chelsea Flower Show happens in May, so it does feel somewhat random that the palace is doing the most to highlight Kate’s work on a show garden three months in advance. Kate is the “co-designer,” and she’s working with professional landscape architects. I would imagine that Kate is the “co-designer” in the sense that she’s like “we should do this and this” and then she goes to get her hair done, and the landscape architects have to figure out how to do that.
In the palace’s press release, they note that Kate’s garden will be “inspired by elements of The Duchess’s childhood and by more recent memories with HRH’s own children….It is hoped that the garden will recapture the sense of wonder and magic that adults enjoyed as children when exploring outside.” People Magazine had more details:
The royal mom has teamed up with two designers, Andrée Davies, 55, and Adam White, 45, to create a showpiece for the annual Chelsea Flower Show in May — and the design plans for their “Back to Nature” garden have been revealed.
The centerpiece of the woodland-themed garden, which is meant to be a fun place for families to experience a natural environment together and enjoy the relaxing benefits of nature, will be a tall platform tree house. Inspired by animal nests, it will provide visitors with a place to sit back and enjoy their surroundings.
The garden has also been designed to encourage children to stay active and engaged and features stepping stones, hollow logs (to test balance and coordination), a waterfall and a stream that kids will be able to play in. A swing set, campfire and diverse range of plants, shrubs and trees are among the many other design elements that the whole family can enjoy.
The project to create the woodland-themed garden was a “passion” for the royal, 37, who has taken on a very hands-on role to add inspiration and practical ideas for the garden.
“To us, this is very much about childhood memories. We all spoke about our childhood memories, being outdoors and exploring nature. She was very open and has been hugely collaborative,” White told reporters after Kate’s visit to a community garden in London last month. “This is very much about the three of us, as co-designers.” White went on to reveal that the collaboration will continue after May’s garden festival, as Princess Kate is also set to work with them on a garden at the Hampton Court Palace Flower Show, a permanent garden at RHS Wisley in Surrey and another unnamed NHS garden.
All this… for a show garden. Sure. My biggest question is: why this kind of advance work? Just to “prove” that Kate is actually taking some private meetings? I honestly don’t have a conspiracy theory or anything, I just think it’s regular old “Kate is keen to design this garden” stuff.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red/Kensington Palace.
Kate & Meg seem to be having a “secret meeting” & “private meeting” competition. Which is cool, because they are actually getting stuff done. Harry & William on the other hand…..
^^This^^
Actually if you look at the court circular, Harry (i don’t know about Will’s…I haven’t bothered to read or count his private meetings) has done more private meetings than Meghan or Kate. It’s just that the media reports more on the wives than the husbands.
It only took Kate about a decade to try to appear as if she’s doing much of anything.
I’m still not buying what Kate’s PR is trying to sell.
I don’t believe Kate will ever be a worker bee.
Harry and Meghan both work and actually seem involved in their causes, it’s not just a palace press release and then we hardly ever see it again.
Kate isn’t known for her gardening skills or interests.
she is known for spending on gardens and clothes and home renovations.
And now she is suddenly “capable” of “advising” professional gardeners and “explaining” to them certain “ideas” about gardening?
Sorry, but the Royals are hardly professionals nor experts in anything. Some of them have studied (which didn’t always lead to improvements) and many of them have been in the army (or not and nevertheless have plenty of medals hanging from their chests) and some of them even have had real life jobs (which they blew up or quit or didn’t develop like that Royal who worked in an embassy in south america but doesn’t speak the language of that country) but they aren’t good at anything in particular – except self-representation and spending money.
I think they had this ready to go when the Markle stuff came out, so it would pull focus a bit from those shenanigans.
I think it is to remind the British public that despite all the “gauche american shenanigans”, the monarchy is still deeply entrenched in traditional tomfoolery, like flower shows.
It is damage control. Like sending a message that everything is ok.
The royals cannot do much about the whole Markle thing, but step away from it. Luckily for Meg, the BRF is known for sketchy family behaviour. Ask Andrew.
^^ All of this! I have nothing to add but you folks are right on this. It’s both to pull focus from the Markle crap and to make it look like they’re working hard behind the scenes.
I too think it was a -feeble- atempt to divert the attention from Thomas Markle’s BS. Publishing the models and a giving the press a new article, that would have been published in April.
Unfortunately it’s too bland of a story to divert much from the Markle drama. Now if they had released something more substantial like an actual, well planned, impactful PROJECT that Kate has actually finished, then that might have helped.
I agree that they are trying to pull focus from Thomas Markle. No doubt there will be another exclusive with Markle in this weekend’s tabs. They may have to trot out George at this point.
Royals have designed gardens for the Chelsea Flower Show before so this is another attempt from the press office to promote Kate and make sure people know she’s doing something. It’s interesting because Harry designed a garden for his charity and The Queen came to view it, years later he came to the Flower Show with W&K and the press office said this was their first visit to the show and they were happy to see the flower named after Charlotte, completely disregarding the fact Harry has been there numerous times and designed a garden. Sideeye….
Yes, Harry’s done at least two, one of which won People’s Choice award. This set of photos is just another attempt at pretending Kate works. Make a big fuss over her showing up for one photo op, and ignoring the fact that she hasn’t been doing much of anything at all. This is always their way – promote the heck out of W&K thinking about doing something, being keen to think about something, going to do something, then showing up for 15 minutes to see the work everyone else has done.
I think this is part of the “Seeeeee, she’s keeeeeen to work!” promotion.
Also, I love that sweater she’s wearing.
I just wanted to say, her hair looks amazing in the outdoor pics! And I always love “outdoorsy Kate”!
“Kate works OK?!?” Is how I read this. I also like the ‘pull attention away from the Markle fiasco’ theory.
Yeah, this does seem like an attempt to draw attention away from the Markles.
Why does it have to be anything of the sort. Should Kate just hide away, then get accused again of being Lazy Kate?
Instead of photo ops with the designers who are going to do the actual work in creating the garden she should be visiting more of her patronages. That’s what she needs to be seen doing. This is a PR fluff piece like the Huffpo “editing session”.
Yes the HuffPo editing where she showed up for a 15 minute photo op, then was papped shopping the rest of the day. That HP bit was in exchange for their US outlet stopping publishing pap photos of the kids that the UK press were too scared to publish.
I think its partly distract from the Markle mess but also because it was announced in January that the RHS would release more information about her garden on February 11th. KP released these pictures on February 10th as sort of a preview to that.
So basically they are designing a park?
I think this would have had more of an impact if the reveal came with the initial opening of the garden.
Someone must have read the several comments of ‘photos or it didn’t happen’ when it came to Keen Kate.
Damned if she does and damned if she doesn’t. If she isn’t (seen) doing something she is lazy Kate, if she is (seen) doing something it is all bigging her up all because of Meghan.
There is a long and historic link between the Royals and Chelsea Flower Show, so nothing to get snarky about here.
Agreed. It’s really frustrating. Both women are doing more public work than their lazy husbands.
Seriously. My god. “She wants to be seen as keen to work.” She IS literally working. She is working when she’s hosting dinner parties. She is working when she is having meetings they don’t bother to report on or show pictures lf. She is working when she is literally orchestrating the most comprehensive sociological study on families in the last 160 years in the UK, but research and administrative meetings don’t count as work here, either, for some bizarre reason. Royal duties “include” public events. Being in public is not “the” duty. Nasty comments about either woman no matter where I go. If they have done something wrong, fine, but criticizing someone for working a job that you don’t consider work just makes one look foolish, arrogant, and petty. KM has a better job than all of us. She doesn’t have to deal with the daily grind. She doesn’t have to put in an unhealthy amount of hours to avoid getting fired. That doesn’t mean she isn’t working. The royals are enjoyng the publicicty from its newest member, and the palace has released these images, as they always planned to, because they are doing this thing called public relations, you know, where the realize they have thousands of social media followers who might actually care about the events if they know about them ahead of time? There. Mystery solved.
“She is working when she is literally orchestrating the most comprehensive sociological study on families in the last 160 years in the UK, but research and administrative meetings don’t count as work here, either, for some bizarre reason.”
LOL. What PoorJason brand Koolaid are you drinking?
Kate still has fewer meetings and appearances than all of the other senior royals so while everyone has acknowledged that royal work isn’t 9 to 5, we are also saying she isn’t doing what the other royals are doing. By that lower standard she still is lacking and has been lacking for 8 years.
@Nota right?? Katie Nicholl’s article seemed to have the intended effect….
Drinking no KoolAid. Kate doesn’t work enough, and she is not gifted at her job. I am a researcher and historian and know wtf I am talking about, and the hate against Kate is spreading to the non-royals who work with her. Dismissing this MASSIVE undertaking is grossly disrespectful to the academics, sociologists, statisticians, and professionals working on this project. Trash talk her all you want, but research *the project* before pretending like you lnow what the hell you are talking about.
Since these comparisons are obviously with the “other couple”,ALL of them,should be out in the public at least 3 days a week,every week.
Since the beginning of the year,ALL their schedules are incredibly similar for type of “work” and frequency. William is probably the only one who is doing a bit more.
There’s an “engagement” and a week of deserved breaks from the spotlight. When they do some engagements for two days in a row,and they prove that they are really hard working, the break becomes 10/15 days.
The “royal work” they are supposed to do is hardly hard work in the first place.. But what they all do is partime royal job,including the occasional “behind the scenes” meeting,always accurately reported by the press sooner or later,and that apparently sometimes can be used as evidence that the person is doing incredible hard work” (behind the scenes..of course).
@sian
Liked your comment and how your focus and interest is on the project she is associated with.
I usually work hard at a job I love. But that doesn’t mean I need to get emotional over how much or little someone works.
Sounds like you feel the same way.
Have been stuck at home away from work by snow.
This “massive” undertaking is nothing more than yet another umbrella plan to take credit for what other people are already doing. Making these professionals take time out of their jobs to attend meetings, many of which Kate does not attend, just to brief Keen Kate on what is already happening.
This is not the most amazing, massive investigation into the lives of children in the UK in the last 160 years. It is Quinn trying desperately to make it look like Kate cares about anything, when all Kate does is show up for photo ops.
The fact is she could have laid a foundation for EIGHT years and yet now she’s very keen. If she had been working all this time Meghan wouldn’t be showing her up. Kate has had all the resources to be great prior to this, but she wasted time. The fact that now she’s getting it together seems disingenuous and it isn’t because Kate actually wants to work, it’s that now she’s forced to due to bad PR and being shown up.
Agree! I work less hours than Kate and I’m a CEO!
@Sian
“She is working when she is literally orchestrating the most comprehensive sociological study on families in the last 160 years in the UK, but research and administrative meetings don’t count as work here, either, for some bizarre reason.”
To claim that SHE is ‘orchestrating’ this research project is incredibly naive and super offensive to the actual academics and administrators who are ACTUALLY undertaking the work. IF anything, it is the actual project manager (and believe me, for a project like this there will be one (or more). She isn’t ‘orchestrating’ anything, other than turning up to the occasional meeting where someone else has already done all of the prep/thinking.
Lets be real.
The other royals didn’t have all of these photo ops for their gardens. This is just another attempt to make Kate’s 15 minutes of showing up look like a whole lot more. Like her “designing” a mug for EACH which turned out to be someone else designing it and Kate showing up at the factory to see it made.
Agreed. I don’t remember getting a sneak peak at Harry’s or any other royals’ garden designs. I actually expect more detailed leak about her mental health initiative, which is why I’m side eyeing this.
For what it’s worth, I actually love the plans for that garden with all the natural features for kids to enjoy. There’s an amazing nature center like that on the edge of town and my son loves going. They have a stream with buckets and watering cans, a forest clearing with tree stumps and sticks, great climbing trees… He’d play there for hours, much more than any playscape. I hope Kate’s initiative actually leads to the creation of gardens and outdoor areas for kids.
@Lindy – I love a good garden, too. I hope it is accessible for kids with physical disabilities as well at least in some parts.
I think it’s unfortunate that she is not being taken seriously as a designer.
I think she is being taken seriously, for her level. She is the least trained, least experienced member out of the three. It would insult the others to give her equal weight, no?
Oh yes, so sad that a woman with near to no experience with landscape design (or anything else, frankly) isnt being taken ‘seriously as a designer’. I suppose you think her second class undergraduate degree in art History qualifies her to be a serious designer? Or is it the few months she worked at Jigsaw as a junior buyer? Come on.
why should she be taken seriously as a designer though? she has no expertise or experience in design. The actual designers should get credit for the work they are doing, which relies on their years of experience and expertise.
People go to school for years to be landscape designers. I understand that they have to say she is the “designer” behind this and I am assuming that she is learning a great deal about landscape/garden design, but she’s not the main designer here.
I think the rationale behind the promotion is to take away from the criticism about her lack of work. Often KP’s excuse is that she is working “behind the scenes” and I think they realized that they had to actually show that she WAS working behind the scenes. Either that, or they are looking to head off criticism in May regarding whether she was actually involved in the design.
You all know I read the IG comments on these posts lol (I probably should stop) and there were SO MANY response to these pictures that were along the lines of “see? a real royal doesn’t have to be out there in the spotlight, she’s just putting in the work with no publicity.”
Except that there were pictures released so clearly there is some publicity? Also, publicity is a huge part of royal work. Yes, behind the scenes stuff is important, but they are supposed to get attention for their charities and patronages.
I dunno, it was just such a weird comment, and there were several like that.
So anyway – yes, I think these pictures were partly to distract from Thomas Markle (but did that really even work?) and partly just to show that Kate DOES work! She really really does!
I use to defend Kate, but this whole think with Meghan has made me change my tune a bit. I think her and William could have done more to help defend Meghan. Even just a few photo ops would have shown more of a united front. Yes, the tabloids picked on Kate too, but she clearly had more of a support system and family in the same country that could help her. Meghan is literally being attacked by her family in such a disgusting way.
I think the palace made a mistake with the insider kate versus meghan leaks.
Than they let the public know their twitter and Instagram comments were causing hours of office work moderating them.
If any of this was actually leaked by any of the four themselves, they should be ashamed. Its not why the public funds their offices or duties.
And yes, meghan is pregnant, and has a huge dad problem. She’s 37 and in her first pregnancy. A show of support from her in laws would probably help her right now.
And would be a great example for their fans on Instagram and twitter.
I want to see more of that room. Need decorating ideas.
When Harry had his Sentebale garden there were notifications about it in January.
Yes? I mean, there’s an article titled “Maidenhead’s Matt Keightley reveals details about RHS Chelsea 2015 garden design for Prince Harry’s charity Sentebale” dated January 2015. As well as one “Chelsea Flower Show garden to be designed for Prince Harry’s charity, Sentebale” December 31 2014. This was based on a super quick google search. I’m sure there’s more.
I think we’re hearing about it now because the RHS had their press conference about the show yesterday and announced plans for several (all?) of the gardens.
Is this something that is set up only for the show and then taken down, or would it be a permanent garden?
It will be an exhibition to begin with but then elements of this garden will be put in to a “green space” of Mental Health unit (?) at an NHS hospital. Seems like its a good initiative and could benefit a lot of people. She will also be co-designing two other gardens this year.
Other people will design the gardens. She will show up for one meeting and say, “No move this because I said so” and the stans will call it designing.
Jeez. Kate Middleton should work more. Period. But her co-designers actually describe her as hands on.
“The Duchess’s collaborators, Andrée Davies and Adam White, told The Telegraph that she’s been in touch with them almost every day as they work on the project. “[Middleton] is very hands on, model making, emailing images, coming up with all the ideas that we want to capture,” Davies said. “She would often bring a folder of cuttings with her full of ideas.”
To ignore that and keep pushing the narrative you believe to be true (she’s not the real designer, she was only there for a photo-op), is the same crap they do to MM in the dailymail comments. Charles and Harry were both listed as designers. A simple google search shows they promoted it months before the garden was actually live.
And I don’t have a degree is design, but I’m a mom and have been to countless playgrounds. That more than anything ‘qualified’ me to help design a community playground in memory of a friend’s late child.
@Danielle I agree with you 1000%. I actually am a designer, I have a degree in design (I also have a minor in Art History so not going to knock Kates’s degree). The actual designers say she is hand’s on attending meetings, brainstorming, pulling imagery on her own time. She isn’t taking credit as THE designer, but she is an active participant in the process. So what if she doesn’t have a degree in design? Most of the “design stars” on HGTV has no education to speak of, they wouldn’t be able to get jobs at proper interior, architecture or landscape design firms. I’m not drinking the Kate koolaid, I just love plants and gardens and this project seems FUN. Maybe the announcement was timed to distract from the Thomas Markle letter, is that a bad thing?! I’d rather hear about this beautiful garden project and the Chelsea Flower show that the trashy Markle relatives. The same way I’d rather read about Meghan’s cookbook project.
So you, like Kate, have absolutely no qualifications for garden design. Once again, others are doing the work with token input from Kate. And her stans insist Kate is the one dong the work.
But what time of day is she emailing? 😉
many gardens at Chelsea have a second permanent home already determined for them iirc
Keep Meghan away from the Chelsea Fower Show, otherwise there will be grow your garden kits available to the masses.
Excellent idea to have more people growing food and flowers. It’s too bad they don’t make seed packets available to the general public, to encourage such a venture. I started my son when he was three, with his own little fruit garden. He grew strawberries, watermelon and giant pumpkins. He was beyond chuffed at the size of his pumpkins, and he’s been growing ever since.
Charles would support this idea too. He’s all about agriculture and sustainability.
that’s mostly what the RHS already does though
Oh, c’mon.
They are doing it (like other Kate activities) to make Meghan looks worse in comparison.
Do you know how important the Chelsea show is in England??? They do live on TV openings of that thing…
Random thoughts: sitting on those logs? All I could think of was, ‘ants’. You sit on a dead downed tree the ants are going to find you. Then I noticed how Kate was dressed differently from the landscape architects. For the interior shots they’re in shirt-sleeves & she’s wearing a thick wool sweater, while for the exterior shots they’re each wearing several layers (fleece & down among them) & she’s just wearing that dressy, thin wool jacket over a sweater. Seems to me she’d be overheated in the first instance & rather cold in the second.
I do think KP is anxious to show that Kate is doing something since M and H are getting ready to go to Morocco, that have to show that Kate and William are hustling too!
But good for Kate, something is better than nothing. And they seemed to have given up on her doing charities that she doesn’t have a particular affinity for. Her children’s charities, gardening, outdoors-y stuff are her interests so that’s what they are going to let her do if it means she will get out and DO them.
Why not? Gardening is huge is Britain so why not have her involved and show it.
Additionally, it is a positive thing to post on during all of the negative press regarding Meghan and Brexit.
Kate and William are better at promoting themselves. The Sussexes need to follow suit.
It’s good to promote themselves working. As long as they’re actually doing it and not just telling us what they intend to do.
Now maybe this is like the blogging thing where Kate showed up to take pictures and then left to go shopping. Who knows? But if they promise to do something and do it -if there’s a garden at the end of this and Kate can talk knowledgeably about it, then okay, cool. I don’t see a problem.
I think for me this is the issue with this. Well, not issue per se. But I cant fault Kate and William for promoting themselves – that’s part of the gig. This just seems like something we have heard before from KP – Kate is super busy and hands on, she’s really taking the lead and doing X – and then find out later that her involvement was minimal. Or she just drops away from doing it and it is never discussed again. Like you said, its the difference between actually doing the work and just telling us what they intend to do.
That’s why I think many of us are sort of rolling our eyes. If she continues to show up and gets publicity for the work and all of that – then good for her. We all say we want Kate to work more, so showing evidence of her working isn’t a bad thing.
But, I do think the timing is weird. I don’t think its necessarily to distract from the Markles. I just think its another sign of the tone deafness of KP sometimes. “Meghan is being raked over the coals and her father is leaking personal letters but look! a garden!”
Releasing the photos at midnight UK time which coincidentally was when the embargo on the story about the letter was lifted was a dumb move. If the idea was to promote the garden it got buried in the other story.
The co-designers have already said she’s been hands on:
“The Duchess’s collaborators, Andrée Davies and Adam White, told The Telegraph that she’s been in touch with them almost every day as they work on the project. “[Middleton] is very hands on, model making, emailing images, coming up with all the ideas that we want to capture,” Davies said. “She would often bring a folder of cuttings with her full of ideas.”
And the RHS announced they’d reveal the designs on Feb 11th back in January. If anything, I’d argue KP jumped the gun a few hours to try and deflect from TMs shenanigans.
@nic919 exactly! But I’m not sure there was anything nefarious, I just think it is another sign of the ineptitude of the KP social media team sometimes. (I said this on Sunday night too – the picture KP used on twitter to announce the DoCs arrival at the BAFTAs was not really that good. It was a really weird choice. You don’t have 10 other pictures to choose from? Pick one of those.) It’s those kinds of things that just make me think they need better people running those accounts.
@BECKS1 and thanks. That’s a much more nuanced take. I get the being skeptical, but this situation doesn’t seem to warrant it.
The ‘studying’ of textiles, now……I have many questions 😜.
@Danielle – yes, I know they said that. But honestly, what else are they going to say? “We’ve never even met her outside of these pictures?”
That’s become the issue. It’s not necessarily how much Kate is actually doing. Its that it feels like we have heard this before and later the truth came out and Kate ended up not looking great.
Maybe she IS doing a ton of the work and is super “hands on” (but can I say that I hate that term now? that and “keen.” Has anyone ever been as hands on as Kate?) but its not unreasonable that some people are like “huh. really?”
@Danielle I think we all have many questions about the textiles! lol.
Again – if Kate is doing the work they describe, then good for her. This seems like a good way to showcase her interest in kids, the outdoors etc via a traditional royal “medium.” (since as noted above, others have designed previous gardens.) I’m not going to hate on her for the doing work.
What will she do when the kids are older and boarding at school? Boarding at school is such an odd thing to me. At what age does that begin?
I’m ALL for gardens gardens gardens! Don’t care which Duchess designs it! It sounds really nice. Even our “low key” Toronto garden show gives out teasers on who is designing garden features for the show. A “get” like Kate is going to generate tons of publicity. I bet it’s a nice garden, I’d love to see it!
@Becks1
The things is, besides this website, no one really gives a damn about how hard or not Kate works. the criticism about her work ethic is not as widespread as you think.
Not true, there is always a list of how many engagements each member of the royal family undertake yearly printed by the British media. I remember seeing them throughout the Charles and Diana years, which would go back to 1981 at the very least. The taxpayers of the UK like to see how much members are doing for the public.
You know, I used to think that if you were living in Britain and you wanted a high powered career in comms/PR, working for the BRF was a good move. Even if the pay sucks, you are making invaluable connections and working with and learning from the very best in the field. Huge career boost when you leave the BRF employ.
But it seems like they re 3 trick ponies. Ignore the racist attacks on Megan, or try to deflect with Kate and her garden (a comms strategy which would have worked well in the 50s, now not so much). Or shut it all down as they have done with Andrew.
PR masterminds they are not.
Well it’s a much more pleasant subject to read about than thomas markle.
The competitive narrative about the couples and duchesses isn’t something that helps any of these four people.
They all have different talents and interests to bring to their public duties. These couples will do different amounts of work as time goes on.
Meghan obviously likes to work hard and often. William and Kate will inherit a bigger workload down the road.
If any of the four are backstabbing each other, shame on them. The public is funding them to promote their charitable activities, not to wage popularity contests.
The royal fans fighting on Instagram are not helping themselves or the royal they like the best. It just spurs another fan with the opposite view to become even angrier.
Is that really how those fans on the palace social media accounts want to be?
What a load of b.s. Kate and her handlers are such phoneys.
Yes, but that’s why Charles installed Quinn as Kate’s new private secretary after useless Rebecca Deacon left. To try to get any kind of work or *appearance* of work out of Kate. And right after that, Kate ended up pregnant again so Quinn had to scramble. It is all smoke and mirrors with these two.
What are the odds that she’s pregnant again by the end of 2020? Maybe the middle? They’re mixing up her classics and throwing them back out at people, but with more frequency- jegging/kid events, evening gown outings, plans to plan, etc- like there’s a timeline here that we don’t know about.
yep
I’m dying over here. Does she think that pictures of her talking with her hands make her look like she’s working harder? These poor architects.
Also, 10-1 her ‘design input’ is a pinterest page. And she sends them pictures from it.
She reminds me of the wealthy donors who show up one day a year at the shelter whose board I sit on, and read one book to the kids for the cameras before leaving in swirl of expensive fur so the kids won’t get their sticky fingers on her clothes.
Kate is clueless, her handlers are as well. It’s all smoke and mirrors with these people. It’s so OBVIOUS she has absolutely no work ethic at all. She’s just there to be Willy’s wife, the mother of privileged children for life, and just be catered to. Wear expensive frocks, do the glam thing with the gems, smile like a goon and try to act interested. The bottom line for me is Kate is absolutely INSUFFERABLE. I would never want to be around her because she is so clueless and privileged. The part I like though is she signed up for living with William…………………..hahaha…….karma there.
How hard they do or dont work is not something it would be reasonable for anyone who doesn’t know them to judge.
Comparing them is apples to oranges. The situations are completely different. I worked over 40hrs a week up to week 41 with my first baby. By the time I got to baby 3 that was absolutely not the case.
Unless you work in their offices it is not possible to know how much work they do out of sight.
I have no idea if I would like them in person or not, so judging character seems unfair.
There have been quirks that have slipped out in public that are fair to have an opinion on. Kate used to have wind lift her dress up so often I was surprised the queen didnt tape it down herself.
Meghan has every right to spend what she wants on her dresses. I dont judge her for it, but it doesn’t seem like the smartest move.
At the end of the year public engagements are added up for them all. That is fair to look at, but they all have different personal lives and different futures ahead of them.
The older members deserve credit for the workload they carry. A lot of people are retired at 70. The queens cousins are still supporting her in their 80s. And they dont get much press for it.
I personally think William and Harry should step up more to help their older relatives, but perhaps they have offered and been told to spend more time with their young families?
So why judge, we have no way of knowing how the royal family spreads the work.
I bet $0.10 that this whole thing with designing a garden for children is somehow going to be a miraculous tie-in with Kate’s larger initiative for children that we’ve heard so much about but seen so little of. Just watch, when they finally do the rollout for the whole Broken Britain thing, a year from now, they’ll use this as a way to point out how keen Kate has been about helping the children and how it’s been a priority in everything that she does.
KP ain’t subtle.
If you wave your hands in air it really shows how keen you are. All this photo spam proves is that Kensington Palace are desperate to make her seem like she’s doing something, anything.
Ehh
Gardens take a long time to plan, a garden display at the Chelsea Flower Show even longer.
Kensington Palace is finally, finally getting the message that like the Swedish Royals, British royals need to release a few shots of these private meetings to show that, yes, indeed, work is being done. There should be more of these from all of them. Charles has done it for years now. Check out Jackson Getty’s Instagram feed, lots of photos of the Prince of Wales surrounded by papers at home, working.
I actually think this is the lane they need to keep Kate in. Let her handle pretty flowers and watch ballet. She is clearly not a people person. Both Kate & Will, to me, appear to be awkward and forced when dealing with everyday peasants. They seem more at ease being in the company of aristocrats so let them do that and let the much more personable Harry & Meg meet with the ordinary people.
Honestly, I agree with you. No one is going to complain if she sticks to ladies-who-lunch type ventures if she does them twice a week for the next 20 years. Even with spending so much money on a terrible wardrobe. Royalists just want to see her. That’s it. This is her wheelhouse, fluffy, inconsequential events. Show up. Smile. Kiss babies. Leave after 20 minutes.