You can’t demand respect, Meghan – you have to earn it like Kate Middleton did
By Jane Moore
AFTER a decade of merely smiling enigmatically at peskily inquisitive reporters, Carole Middleton is suddenly singing like a hyperactive canary.
At the weekend she gave chapter and verse to a newspaper supplement on what Christmas will be like in the Middleton household, and now there she is beaming from the pages of December’s Good Housekeeping magazine while surrounded by festive props.
You can’t demand respect, Meghan- you have to earn it like Kate Middleton did. PA:Press Association
“I’m not a celebrity and don’t want to be one,” she once said. So why the apparent change of heart?
But as the fallout rumours are fairly recent and most glossy mags are laid out six weeks in advance, may I humbly/cynically (take your pick) suggest that the stall she’s laying out might be more monetary than motherly?
In other words, building up traffic to her and husband Michael’s Party Pieces website for Christmas in preparation for potentially flogging it off to an overseas billionaire in the pre-Brexit New Year.
Carole has broken years of silence to talk about her famous family. PA:Press Association
Wills and Kate are expected to join the rest of the royals at Sandringham this year. AP:Associated Press
But I digress. On Christmas Day I will be enduring (“enjoying”, surely? — Ed) our annual family fallout over a game of Monopoly. But if I wasn’t, I’d be straight round to Middleton Towers in Bucklebury, Berks, for what sounds like an idyllically festive few days.
In a Christmas walnutshell, it goes something like this: Wake up whenever, pop in to the local church, go for a walk, open a few pressies, smoked salmon and champagne for lunch, more pressies, some games, then the main meal early evening.
Oh, and all the grandchildren will have a small tree in their bedrooms that they can decorate themselves. The rest of the year, she says, “is really normal most of the time”. Which, to Prince William, who has grown up amid the pomp and circumstance of stuffy royal traditions, must feel like a slice of sheer heaven.
Instead, poor love, he and Kate are expected to join the rest of the royals (including Harry and Meghan) at Sandringham, where the Queen et al stick to the German tradition of opening gifts on Christmas Eve before dressing for a “formal dinner” from which, oh dear, the women eventually retire to another room while the men enjoy a port or brandy.
The Duchess of Cambridge, thanks to her idyllic childhood, knows exactly who she is. Getty – Contributor
Then it’s off to the highly publicised visit to St Mary’s Magdalene church on Christmas morning, followed by a turkey lunch and a communal viewing of “Granny’s” speech at 3pm.
It’s unclear when William and Kate will head off to see her family, but what’s the betting they get in the car with fixed grins before mumbling “thank God that’s over for another year” the second they hit Norfolk’s A148? And that’s why, whatever the truth behind the rumours that Kate and Meghan aren’t getting on, it won’t matter one jot to the admirably grounded Duchess of Cambridge who, thanks to her idyllic childhood, knows exactly who she is.
Meghan, on the other hand, has no such cosy alternative to retreat to. Her parents divorced when she was just six years old and it’s no secret that she’s now estranged from her father Thomas and his highly vocal, deliciously off-message side of the family.
So, however well meaning she is, all her charitable grandstanding and repeated declarations of being “an independent woman” suggest she finds validation from being regarded as a, yawn, groundbreaking feminist role model rather than, as Kate is dismissed by some, a dutiful wife and mother, who toes the royal line and doesn’t make waves.
Meghan will need to quietly earn respect from her new family rather than noisily demand it. AP:Associated Press
But Kate has no need to virtue signal because she’s rooted in the love and respect of her tight-knit family — a set-up she’s replicating with William, who, after his own fractured childhood, clearly adores the normality of life Chez Middleton.
And of course, they’re both equally secure in the knowledge that, post-“King Charles”, the top job is theirs.
Harry, on the other hand, has chosen a bride who, despite her efforts at reinvention, has a chequered past (join the club, dear) and a burning desire to be seen as more than just a pretty appendage to the sixth-in-line to the throne.
That’s understandable. But just like Kate did, it’s far better to quietly earn respect not noisily demand it.
House of Brat 