The Princess of Wales won't be a Queen in her own right but she's learnt some valuable lessons from Queen Elizabeth that she's putting to good use. Of all the late Queen's skills and qualities, we often don't think about her aura of mystery.
The way she presented herself in public was all most people ever saw and she was an expert at keeping her true feelings to herself. Now royal biographer Catherine Mayer has suggested that the Princess of Wales has taken this smart approach too.
"She has done such a clever job of finding a way to adapt to the institution," she told Hello!'s A Right Royal Podcast. "That does not mean that I think she has it easy. [But she's done] very little speaking and almost no confessional spilling of anything about who she is. She's quite enigmatic.
Like Queen Elizabeth, Kate has cultivated an ability to connect with the public without sharing too much of her private self. She's appeared on two podcasts and in a few interviews, but that's pretty much the extent of her "confessional spilling" and she admired the Queen deeply.
Speaking on ITV's Our Queen at Ninety Kate said, "Everyone feels like they've had some quality time with Her Majesty and, also, a real personal connection and I think that's a real skill."
Earlier this year portrait artist Chris Levine told woman&home that he'd found Her Majesty hard to read at their first sitting. He declared, "She wasn't giving anything away and I realised that she'd developed a mechanism where you couldn't tell what she was thinking or feeling because she's meeting people all the time. I've never experienced it with anyone else in my life and it was really quite unnerving."
Given how many people Queen Elizabeth met every year and her diplomatic position this skill was probably very necessary and will be just as useful for Kate. With scrutiny on her at all times, there will be occasions where the Princess can't afford to let her innermost thoughts become known.
This approach also helps draw a line between her work and private life and means she doesn't risk sharing too much. Catherine Mayer's new book Divide and Rule: Royal Women and Their Battles focuses on several royals including Kate and the author praised her and Prince William for finding a way to live in relative privacy whilst being in the public eye.
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In her view, this is "enormously difficult" to do and woman&home Royal Correspondent Emily Andrews claims on her Keeping Up With The Royals podcast that there is definitely a difference between her public and private personas.
"The public Catherine is quite reserved and quite formal and very warm with the kiddies…but she's not going to give you too much," Emily alleged. "The private Kate is quite different. Very warm, very friendly, and got a great sense of humour."
According to her, the Princess likes a good practical joke too, though it's unlikely members of the public will ever actually get to see this in practice.
