Kate Middleton’s hair and makeup are impeccable. On her left hand is the famous engagement ring given to Diana Spencer by Charles Windsor, a bright blue sapphire surrounded by diamonds and passed on to Middleton by her husband William Windsor. The hair and ring are in contrast to the seemingly casual attire, a pair of jeans and a striped sweater. She sits on a bench against a backdrop of yellow flowers and green grass. The overall effect is of a glamorous but approachable mom, gently dropping a devastating announcement just before she goes off to pick up her children from school.
The sweater costs £650, the ring is currently valued at $400,000, and Middleton—the future Queen of England—is sitting on the grounds of Windsor Castle, in a two-minute video explaining that she has been silent for months after abdominal surgery followed by a cancer diagnosis. If you zoom in, you can see the eyes of a woman who is very, very tired and probably in some combination of pain and discomfort, pushing herself to stay upright long enough to make the announcement to a waiting public.
These are the contradictions of Middleton and her position in a modern monarchy—at the intersection of enormous pain and great wealth, fronting an institution that is long past its prime.
In its two-minute entirety, the video is concise and informative, sad and enlightening. It has been praised as a sign of bravery and resilience but it is none of that. Middleton’s announcement and the circumstances of its arrival are proof of the searing cruelty of the monarchy, an institution that only survives for survival’s sake and serves no purpose other than to allow a pack of useless holdovers from a bygone era to sup off the fat of the land. Kate Middleton’s health will serve to keep even the notoriously rabid British tabloid press away. The royals will continue to delude masses of people into believing that they still need an outmoded symbol of values that were always, at best, hazy and, at worst, emblematic of a rapacious imperialism that needs to disappear. With all its messy outbursts over decades, the royal family is little more than a circus, one where the clowns just happen to wear designer clothing, bespoke suits, and jewels from the far-flung reaches of the former British Empire.1The use of the word “circus” to describe the royals has risen in the last decade or so—see, for instance, Imogen West-Knights in Slate—but the family has, arguably, always acted like one. The performers have to show up no matter what, ready to smile and shake hands under all circumstances and always show their best faces. Middleton, forced to stand on the steps of St. Mary’s Hospital mere hours after birthing each of her three children, probably bleeding into an adult diaper, has described the ordeal as “terrifying.” We might recall that Elizabeth Windsor, the last monarch, died two days after her ceremonial meeting with Liz Truss, then the new prime minister: photographs show an elderly woman with a fixed and deathly smile on her face and a bruise on her hand where she may have had an intravenous line inserted into her. Truss had been driven up to Balmoral because of the monarch’s mobility issues, instead of going through the ceremony in London. By all accounts it lasted barely a few minutes, and we can imagine a doped up queen kept afloat on some cocktail of drugs to make sure she could walk even a few last steps for the cameras. In this context of women being pushed to perform their royal duties no matter what, to praise Kate Middleton for her “bravery” is like praising a woman for crawling across the finish line of a race after being beaten half to death by the organisers. The video is an indictment of the British monarchy and a clear indication that it is past time to let go of it and the damaging fairy tale myths it has spawned.
Middleton’s appearance is likely to cause an erasure of public memory: cancer is a terrifying, sad, and saddening condition, no matter whether or not one escapes its clutches, and the public is not likely to revisit her past history with the Windsors out of a sense of respect. But it’s worth remembering the circumstances under which she effectively slid under the castle gate with all the dexterity of Indiana Jones rushing under those descending ramparts in the Temple of Doom. Her resilience and bravery are not any less poignant if we acknowledge that Middleton’s transformation into the future queen has been part of a distinctly anti-feminist slog that is rooted in a corrupt, imperial project. The monarchy’s failed attempts to “modernise” itself through changes in its mating habits only reveal that while the royals meet, date, and marry somewhat differently these days, their marriages are still arranged and scrutinised to make sure that they fit antiquated ideas about gender and the role of the crown.
To briefly recap how we got here: For nearly a fortnight after the March 10 publication of an awkwardly manipulated photograph, the internet joked about Middleton’s whereabouts as she disappeared from view. The image was odd enough, even without all the tell-tale signs of photoshopping: Middleton’s head is oversized, and the eye cannot resist scanning and counting heads and torsos to make sure they match all the many, many hands in evidence. In light of her silence and the fact that she was nowhere to be seen in public, the internet invented any number of conspiracies—ranging from a Brazilian butt lift to her actual death. Middleton was the centre of countless memes and jokes, and the speculative riffs spooled like an endless roll of toilet paper thrown around and over the branches of a tree.
Now, apologies abound and celebrities like Blake Lively and Kim Kardashian are rushing to take back their words. This spirit of contrition may not last long—spite and anger are what sustain media these days—but for now, there’s a great deal of finger-wagging and many analyses.
But why be contrite? Instead of a collective apology, we ought to take this opportunity to argue for an end to the monarchy and the distribution of its significant wealth amongst former colonies still reeling from the effects of colonial exploitation. Barbados has removed the monarch as its titular head of state, and a Caribbean tour by William and Kate Windsor was met with protests. Charles Windsor, also under treatment for cancer, wore not one but two crowns on his coronation day and, along with his mother, has so far received more than £1 billion in revenues from the duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall, “which run giant portfolios of land and property across England,” according to an extensive Guardian investigation. In her video, Middleton spoke of loving her “work” and wanting to get back to it, but the “work” consists of showing up at events and smiling and waving, a lot. Which is what most of the royals do, all year long, with varying salaries and plenty of jewels. Very few of them would survive in the real world, and it will be interesting to see what Harry Windsor will end up doing to afford the luxurious, 16-bedroom, $21 million mansion that he and Meghan Markle occupy, with all two of their children.
As I’ve written in “Her Royal Hymen: Kate Middleton Drops Top, Finds Modesty, Helps Brand Britain,” the monarchy is little more than a giant generator of tourist revenue, nearly $2 billion: without it, people might still flock to see crumbling castles and slightly dusty estates but they’re mostly kept interested because there are actual, real people, with actual, real sceptres and thrones whose visages keep hope alive that all little girls can become princesses. (It’s also a primary reason why the isle’s fervent and particularly nasty tabloid press continues to thrive.) In that sense, Britain needs the royals.
And the royals need their “jobs” and are nothing without the constant attention. Diana Spencer, a complex figure thrust into the role of an adult Royal consort while not yet out of her teens, understood the power of media long before the Windsors grasped that they now lived in a world where they could no longer depend on a deferential public and press to look past all their dirty laundry. The downturned look, the ability to weave even explosive revelations about her love life into a tale of The Sad Princess, her carefully manipulated and staged shows of spontaneous love and celebration with her children—all of it created the persona of a beloved “People’s Princess” (a contradiction in terms). To be fair, she was also willing to use her image to aid causes that were, at the time, overlooked or deeply unpopular—including landmines and the social stigma surrounding people with HIV. (We should, of course, remember, that many, many anonymous activists had been working on these issues.) But what she understood keenly was that she needed to always be there, where there was the centre of attention, a place that had to be occupied lest the public forget about her. To that end, she actively and sometimes surreptitiously invited editors to meetings and gave the tabloids advance notice of her appearances. She fed a monster that devoured her.
Middleton, married to a man who, understandably, grew up hating the press, has been much more calm and savvy—largely free of the kind of tumult that trailed Spencer, who spent the latter part of her life redefining herself away from under the shadow of the Windsors (but not without a hefty settlement and access to several privileges). But Middleton is too often held up as a role model for young girls and women, and her marriage is hailed as a modern one simply because she has a college degree and a (presumed) sex life before marriage, and is a “commoner,” albeit one from a wealthy family. She worked hard to wind up with Windsor, going so far as to switch colleges so that they might both attend St. Andrews in Scotland. What followed was a ten-year relationship of sorts, apparently bolstered by her mother Carole Middleton’s encouragement to hang on, prompting the press to dub her “Waity Katie.” In those years, Middleton took on a series of mostly meaningless “jobs,” the kind that well-off young women inhabit listlessly while waiting to marry. There’s nothing particularly modern about the idea that you should put your life on hold for a decade waiting for the day your prince arrives with a sapphire ring that is also, surely, a reminder of his mother’s tormented life and marriage.
Both Middleton and her estranged sister-in-law Meghan Markle, a former television actor, presented themselves as “modern,” but both are women whose primary goal was to marry wealthy men and whose careers existed solely to advance that agenda. Each has since made sure to propagate the line, with an heir and a spare (in Middleton’s case, a spare for the spare as well). Markle, of the Disney-wide eyes and aw-gee practised smiles, crafted a backstory that she had no idea who Harry Windsor was when she was first set up on a date with him, agreed to a trip to Botswana after just two meetings, and somehow spontaneously managed to record his proposal for posterity. Why worry that a famous, well-connected man—with his own security team to clean up messes—might toss you off the boat in foreign climes if there’s a chance you could become a Windsor? One must weigh the odds judiciously: the possibility of an untidy death versus the potential to become a storybook princess with access to immense wealth and a cushy lifestyle paid for by the public.
Things went badly for Markle, and her plainly visible guile should not excuse the vicious torrent of racism that she experienced from the press, but it also seems that she was unprepared for the role of puppet-and-clown and the importance of hugging germ-laden children and their overly curious parents–all in exchange for first-class travel and free board and lodging along with a hefty clothing allowance. Even Harry Windsor acknowledges that his brother warned him that his bride-to-be knew nothing about the country or even the city of London, leave alone what it might mean to have to not just be a royal but perform as one. Markle, for a while, offered the possibility of modernising the monarchy because she is a woman of colour—but what is the point of diversifying an institution that will remain rotten to the core no matter how many non-white people occupy it?
Many will argue that being a mother and wife is uncompensated labour and it certainly is. Middleton may well be more hands on than most royals before her, but she will still have the kind of stellar help unavailable to most women. She will get the best medical care necessary—and she should, let there be no doubt about that. But we might do well to remember that the National Health Service, long the real jewel in the crown, has been severely stressed, and at a time when there is still a cost of living crisis so acute that people have had to choose to live without heat. According to a recent study, 300,000 children fell into “absolute poverty” during the height of the crisis. Poverty is a quagmire: once you fall in, it’s next to impossible to get out. The New Statesman reports that the social care system is failing to such an extent that, according to one family carer, his child with special and developmental needs would have fared better in Dickens’s England.
We can and should hope that Middleton comes out of this with her health intact, and that the castle—and her husband, who could end the charade—stop the pressure on her to keep performing. As many people on social media have pointed out, it is horrifying that Kensington Castle first threw her under the bus and made a woman going through chemotherapy apologise for her photoshopping and then a week later, compelled her to make a video. No doubt, there’s a chance that a mere official statement would have been disbelieved and the public had to see her. Still, we can see in her eyes that the woman needed more.
Why not end this here? This could be the opportunity to stop and consider what the human costs are in maintaining the pomp and finery of a such a blood-soaked institution. We can sympathise with a young family burdened with such dreadful health news on more than one front, and we can also sympathise with a woman who, even if she deliberately schemed her way into royalty is now forced to carry on, carry on, carry on, smiling as brightly as the sun in that video, her sapphire ring glinting in its rays. Middleton and her husband have the difficult task ahead of breaking the news to their very young children and consoling them. In this at least, they seem to handle things a bit differently from times past: Charles was left behind to the care of nannies even as a very young child while his mother went off on tours that lasted many months. The younger Windsors are still required to adhere to royal rules about the children’s upbringing, but if there is anything modern about this royal family, let it be that the parents hold their children close and console them when they cry. And if there is to be anything modern about the monarchy, let it be that it ends.
See also:
Son, You Lie: Harry Windsor Is Exploiting His Mother’s Death
Her Royal Hymen: Kate Middleton Drops Top, Finds Modesty, Helps Brand Britain
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Image: Wiki, Photo by Ian Jones, 5th May 2023.
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