Is Kate Middleton returning to working life? All signs point to a tentative, gentle … maybe.
Last Tuesday, the Princess of Wales popped up in the Court Circular, a kind of publicly available attendance sheet that reports what the various working members of the Royal Family have been up to in an official capacity that day. (On Sunday, for example, it recorded that Princess Anne went to a farm to meet some Beef Shorthorn cattle in her capacity as patron of that august breed.)
Seeing Kate’s name appearing in the circular was a bit of a novelty these days. In fact, it’s only the fourth time she’s been recorded doing anything official in 2024: The other occasions were Wimbledon, Trooping the Colour and “the anniversary of her birthday” back in January.
There’s a reason royal reporters weren’t aware that the princess was attending a work event: Kate’s first official engagement in months was actually a behind-closed-doors one, holding a meeting about the Royal Foundation’s Early Years work at Windsor Castle. We don’t know how long it was, who was there, and there weren’t any pictures, but you don’t tend to get that in the Court Circular. (Their entire coverage of Elizabeth’s passing was a one-liner: “The Queen died peacefully this afternoon.”)
This single, low-key engagement could mark a major step forward in Kate’s return to work following months of illness, treatment and seeming recovery, but it could also be a big sign that she is coming back to working-royal life as a different woman (no, not like the Clone-spiracists believe), and doing this whole princess gig very in a new way.
The Princess of Wales taking a meeting at this stage isn’t entirely unexpected. After all, she said as much in the video she released a few weeks ago when she shared the news that she’d finished chemo. “I am looking forward to being back at work,” she said, “and undertaking a few more public engagements when I can.”
Last week’s Early Years meeting, however, wasn’t really a public engagement. And it certainly wasn’t anything like what the King chose to do when he returned to work after his own cancer treatment. Rather than do the whole royal shebang — pulling up in a Bentley, bank of photographers, handshakes, a delegation to meet you at the door, well-wishers gathered behind barricades — Kate seems to be approaching any return to working life very differently, with little fanfare.
It gets into intrusive, weird territory when you start speculating what her activity level means in relation to her health status, but we do know that Kate, at least this summer, felt well enough to do it up in full glam for the big, flashy public events like Trooping the Colour and Wimbledon.
If she’d wanted to kick off her return to work with a photo-opp-heavy visit that would have led the nightly news, we assume she would have — but she didn’t.
Instead, she chose a low-key meeting that signals she still remains committed to the cause she’s made her royal calling card. She also followed that up with an appearance up at Balmoral this weekend, driving to church with William, wearing the same pheasant-feathered fedora we saw her in a few weeks ago.
It’s not quite a rejection of royal trappings, but it is a downplaying of them, a deliberate choice not to pull the usual levers for every appearance. (New clothes, lots of press, smiling photo opps.) There’s certainly a rejection of doing things by the old playbook.
Exhibit A? That video released a few weeks ago, which gifted the world with the unprecedented sight of the heir to the throne lolling on a beach blanket with his wife in his arms, and their kids playing a card game with used Nespresso pods as the chips. However slickly produced and carefully curated — Kate driving stick in a Land Rover in a nod to archival footage of Queen Elizabeth doing the same thing is no accident, for example — it was still a strangely vulnerable thing, letting the world into a family life that they’ve guarded fiercely before this. It was also a Kate-led production, narrated by her, speaking to us in her own voice in a way that we’ve never really heard before. The tone itself — emotive, sentimental even — also feels like a far cry from the formal speeches we’ve heard her give in years past.
A message from Catherine, The Princess of Wales
As the summer comes to an end, I cannot tell you what a relief it is to have finally completed my chemotherapy treatment.
The last nine months have been incredibly tough for us as a family. Life as you know it can change in an… pic.twitter.com/9S1W8sDHUL
— The Prince and Princess of Wales (@KensingtonRoyal) September 9, 2024
In many ways, Kate’s is a very human return to work. If her earlier public appearances — like turning up to Trooping the Colour in heels and finery — may have been criticized as downplaying how hard the cancer experience can be, this slow, taking-it-as-it-comes return could be a response to that, especially when paired with her acknowledgment about the “long” path that she still has in front of her. The fact that her first public appearance after announcing she was finished with chemo happened within the protective bubble of a car, en route to the spiritual succour of church and while she was on a weekend break with her husband while the kids stayed at home seems like a not-so-subtle way of saying: “I’m doing OK, but I’m still very much in rest-and-recovery mode.”
You’d also like to hope that Kate, who has spoken several times about standing in solidarity with other people living with cancer, is also modelling the kind of compassionate treatment you’d hope everyone dealing with a health challenge would receive in the workplace.
That certainly chimes with a report in The Times earlier in September, that said Kate’s team was planning to work around her “good days,” with “no expectation for her to rush back to public life.”
And even when she does? She’ll be doing it slowly — and differently.
