Kate Middleton’s private struggle while Prince William suffered with COVID

On April 9th, the royal news broke: William and Kate, Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, had made their first official video call engagement, talking to primary school staff and children. (And you thought you were royalty would be just finger sandwiches and painted servants ironing your socks …)

Royal watchers and social media were delighted with the technical expertise of the future king and queen and Kate’s choice of an affordable Zara sweater for the occasion, pairing it with her signature cheerful, fun hockey stick personality.

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The world now knows that the reality was far less rosy when the couple zoomed out from behind the walls of their Georgian mansion, Anm Hall.

Earlier this week The sun brought news that William was diagnosed with COVID-19 in early April, with a source saying, “William was hit pretty hard by the virus – it really hit him for six.”

Given that William will one day be the title chief of a government, an army, and a church, it was quite a monumental event for the palace machine to decide to keep it a secret.

While his father Prince Charles’s positive coronavirus result was released on March 25, the Palace stated that the decision not to publish Williams’s result was too “He just didn’t want people to worry. He felt that more important things were going on in the country. ”

This philosophy of staying calm and zooming in doesn’t hold up particularly well, especially given that other high profile figures like Prime Minister Boris Johnson felt it appropriate to make their diagnoses public.

Even after Prince Andrew / Jeffery Epstein’s Imbroglio had doubts about the transparency of the royal family for more than a year, the cunning of this William stealth is up for debate.

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But we’re here to talk about Kate.

While the exact date of Williams’ diagnosis has not been released, the Duke and Kate attended the London Ambulance National Health Service 111 Service on March 19. The next time he was seen in public, so to speak, was the public school video conference mentioned above, which suggests he was sick at some point between those dates.

During the COVID pandemic, the 38-year-old Duchess was widely celebrated as a “belter”. Given the first real test in her (almost) 10 years in the royal profession, Kate has shone like a blow dryer beacon of happiness awaited by waiting princesses.

If there is one thing that can be said about Kate is that it makes it seem effortless to be a working member of the royal family.

When she curls up on an official chore or engagement, there’s no indication that she has (most likely) been up since dawn undergoing lengthy hours of hair and makeup sessions, or that she has sat through the long preparations required Engagement meetings.

And that’s why Kate’s performance in these 20 days in late March and early April is even more remarkable in retrospect than assumed at the time.

While she was showing up on Zoom calls in the world there, distributing carefree support and assertiveness, her own personal life must have been positively hellish.

First William. The sun reported that the second on the throne: “At one point he had difficulty breathing, so everyone around him was obviously quite panicked.

“After seeing medics and testing positive – which was obviously quite a shock given his fitness and health – William was determined that it should continue as usual.

“He was determined to meet his obligations.”

On a purely personal level, it must have been terrifying for Kate to have her family struck by a potentially fatal disease that has killed thousands of otherwise young and healthy adults around the world.

Next year will be the Cambridges wedding anniversary for the tenth anniversary. Surely none of the 1,900 people at Westminster Abbey that day or two billion who watched it on television could have predicted that in less than a decade, both first and second on the throne would be crushed by a global pandemic.

And yet there was Kate in her mustard Zara act, which had passed perhaps the greatest personal and professional test of her marriage and royal career, while exuding constant happiness.

Likewise, Anm Hall could have ten bedrooms, but the logistics of quarantined William in a house that also housed three wild children, a nanny, a housekeeper, and the Duke and Duchess’s staff are far from straightforward.

During World War II, the Queen Mother (then Queen Elizabeth) assumed sacred status after her appearance during the Blitz. She and her husband King George VI. Refused to leave Buckingham Palace for security reasons in the country, even when bombs landed on the palace grounds. They said, “I’m glad we were bombed. Now we can look the East End in the eye. “Likewise, images that show the 40-year-old bomb attacks in London and forego judicial comfort have become legendary.

The lesson here is that in the face of a one-off test of flying (most likely) pastel colors, the Queen Mother passed and turned into a revered, perfumed champion for the masses.

This year, Kate faced the same challenge that made history. Because in moments like this the monarchy really comes into its own and shines: As national cheerleaders who are constantly called to rejoice and cheer up a tired and scared nation.

In April the Queen gave a deeply touching and rare speech with the words: “We will meet again.”

During the UK’s first lockdown (the second started this week), the entire roster of high-ranking working members of the royal family – Prince Charles, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, Princess Anne, Prince Edward and his wife Sophie, Countess of Wessex – along with Kate and William – took Zoom engagements like Princess Margaret in a drinks cart. (That is, with impressive speed and undeniable passion.)

But let’s face it here: while Anne’s steely and formidable work ethic might be the stuff the court circular is made of, the punters really want the stars of the show: Kate and William. (And in that order I would bet.)

So, with William in his sickbed and Harry and Meghan, Duke and Duchess of Sussex, who had long been flown out of the palace for the occasional dawn life of yoga and dinner Real housewives from Beverly Hills Alum (hello David Foster), all of that responsibility fell on Kate’s very narrow shoulders.

Sure, she may be rich and privileged in the extreme, but imagine for a moment the incredible pressures and weight of a country and institution that weighed on her during this time.

Despite all this, Kate beamed and smiled and charmed and radiated with exemplary poise and charm to keep calm and move on.

And all of this, we now know, she managed to get her way while her husband battled a potentially life-threatening illness and she was forced to become a quasi-single mother. (Okay, quasi-single motherhood that came with a small cadre of dedicated staff and a country house in Norfolk that probably has plenty of nooks and crannies for a tired mother to eat a glass of restorative Pinot Grigio from her rampaging brood.)

But that doesn’t change the fact that while she was performing the royal feat of our entire lives, Kate now knows that she did so while facing the same turbulence and heartache as the millions plus other British mothers who battle a beloved COVID also had to face.

But Kate took the helm and was blinded during this crisis. Her performance is a timely reminder of the usefulness of the royal family, aside from being eternal tabloid fodder and opening the Chelsea Flower Show.

Kate took all this burden on herself with her seemingly exemplary, balanced and polished veneer that has never cracked a single time.

There are millions and millions of families around the world who have suffered so much more than Kate during this pandemic. In the context of the royal family, however, it can be said that the Duchess has by far the most challenging and demanding year behind her.

In addition, she mastered the greatest challenge of her royal career with flying, dazzling colors.

Famed photographer Cecil Beaton once described the Queen Mother as “a marshmallow made on a welder”. After this year, we can safely say that Kate is made from the same sturdy, perfumed material.

Daniela Elser is a royal expert and writer with over 15 years experience working on a number of leading Australian media titles.