Last week, there was a surprising amount of keenery for Carole Middleton’s 70th birthday. They’ve honestly started treating her like she’s the “queen mother,” which in a sense, she sort of is. We heard lots about Carole’s nonexistent discretion, non-denials about how she pushed Kate to stalk William, and how Carole deserves a title after years of keeping Will & Kate’s show on the road. Well, they continue to lay it on thick. Really makes you wonder why now, and how Carole was able to come in from the cold after her shameful Party Pieces catastrophe.

Carole Middleton has been by her daughter’s side as Princess Kate Middleton navigates her recovery after her cancer diagnosis.

“Carole has always been a rock for Kate, especially this past year — she’s been amazing,” royal expert and author Ingrid Seward, told HELLO! in an interview published on Monday, February 3. “I have met her a couple of times and the word that keeps coming back to me is ‘strength.’ I imagine her as a sort of pioneer woman driving a wagon with a rifle at her feet, and three children in the back, fighting off any enemy. Basically, that’s what she’s been doing all her life, isn’t it?”

Seward shared that Carole, 70, has been “a really helpful, practical and unflappable mum and grandmother” to Kate, 43, and husband Prince William’s kids: Prince George, 11, Princess Charlotte, 9, and Prince Louis, 6.

“Rather than ask what she can do, she just gets on with it; she’s very proactive. When William went back to royal duties, she was doing the school run and probably doing things like filling the freezer with the kids’ favorite foods,” Seward said of Carole. “Looking after the three kids would have been absolutely no problem for her whatsoever and Kate would have been able to relax in the knowledge that her mother’s hand was on the wheel.”

Seward noted that Carole has “always” been both a “physical and emotional support” to Kate, who shared her undisclosed type of cancer diagnosis with the world in March 2024. Months later, Kate revealed she had finished chemo and in January 2025 announced she was in remission.

“The Middletons are a traditional family, which is why William enjoyed being around them so much,” Seward claimed. “When things go wrong, they pull together under [Carole’s] direction. She is the matriarch of this family and they all take her advice because they have great respect for their mum. And, as their only granny, Carole is very close to William and Kate’s children. I wouldn’t be surprised if she has taken them away on little holidays too. She has always organised lovely holidays for her family, from yachts in Mustique to ski trips. William plays a huge part in all this, because he just adores the Middletons. They give him the cosy family life that Diana always wanted him to have.” (William’s mother, Princess Diana, died at age 36 in an August 1997 car accident.)

[From Us Weekly]

This might seem like a minor thing, but I’m absolutely astonished that no one has really nailed down who was doing the bloody school runs for the past two years. It was a real thing last year, during Kate’s illness/convalescence, where sources close to William insisted that he could not work because he alone was doing the school run. His people kept saying that, over and over for months. And now the story is, actually, Carole was doing the school runs. What was William doing then? And what was William doing while Carole cared for his children and Kate was going to chemotherapy alone? This is also like the new admissions that Kate spent a lot of time in Bucklebury last year, when we were told at the time that she was recuperating in Windsor, at Adelaide Cottage. Just all of these little lies, exaggerations, misrepresentations starting to add up.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid.