ARTICLE
After Diana, Kate reinvents the
job of princess
F
ew mothers taking a new baby home would want
a crowd of photographers snapping them from every angle at the hospital door, but Kate, future Queen
of England, is likely to handle the bizarre situation like
a consummate professional.Since marrying Prince William in 2011, Kate has learnt how to be a princess for the
era of 24-hour news: always beautifully dressed, smiling
for the cameras, she has withstood scrutiny and done
nothing controversial.The birth of her second child, expected imminently, will attract a media circus like the one
that greeted the arrival of her firstborn, Prince George, in
2013, reflecting global interest in the young royal couple
and their family.It is a peculiar kind of stardom. Her image
is ubiquitous on the front pages, fans cheer her at every
stage-managed appearance, and the clothes she wears
sell out in a flash, yet Kate has revealed very little of substance about herself.“She’s popular for the same reason
the Queen is. They’re both people who say almost nothing but on to whom others are able to project the things
that they like,” said Catherine Mayer, who wrote about
Kate in the US magazine Time when it selected her as
a runner-up for the title of “Person of the Year” in 2011.
But there is a flipside to a fame built on beauty, glamour and the old-fashioned fairytale fantasy of marrying a
prince.“It’s an amazingly intrusive kind of coverage that
only women undergo and it means that at some point it
will also turn because inevitably she will get older,” said
Mayer.An early sign of that came in February when the
Daily Mail, Britain’s second-biggest selling n ]