Carole Middleton making her Cheltenham Festival debut on 11th March was exciting enough, but we were then treated to a royal reunion that will surely make you smile. The Princess of Wales is famously not an avid racing fan, so Carole didn’t enjoy Ladies Day with her daughter. Instead, she was pictured having a brilliant time with Zara and Mike Tindall and Princess Anne.
This new Cheltenham "Fab Four" aren’t a group you’d usually see together and so seeing their interactions was especially interesting - and a joy to witness. Carole was spotted arriving with the Tindalls and laughing and joking with Zara, before later joining them, Anne and Queen Camilla in the Royal Box to watch the races.
At one point, she even affectionately put her arm around Princess Anne - just a few weeks after her hilarious moment at the rugby involving a hug.
It’s clear that Carole Middleton was more than comfortable in this regal company and, more than that, enjoys a relationship with these royals that we’ve never really got to glimpse or appreciate before.
Carole and her husband Michael have understandably met King Charles and Queen Camilla plenty of times - they do after all share grandchildren. They couple have been at plenty of occasions where the whole family was there, from the coronation to Queen Elizabeth’s funeral, and yet we never usually see them standing near Zara, Mike or Princess Anne.
The warmth between them at Cheltenham shows that the extended Royal Family have embraced Kate’s family with open arms and forged their own bonds with her parents. This was reportedly exactly what Prince William always wanted and had asked Queen Elizabeth to help with.
"The Queen knew how close not only Kate but William was to the Middletons and how important it was to keep them close and make them feel included," royal expert Katie Nicholl previously claimed. "William wanted them to be a part of the family and wanted the Queen to make them feel very welcomed."
The Prince of Wales is also said to have made a "direct request" for his wife’s family to be included in King Charles’s coronation. In his biography King Charles III: New King, New Court, The Inside Story, Robert Hardman quoted a source, who alleged that "having all of them there was very important to him".
Carole, Michael and Kate’s siblings James and Pippa were all at the coronation ceremony and they are surely going to be included in even more events in the future when Prince William and Prince George become monarchs.
His hopes that they would be "part of the family" have paid off already by the looks of it and the rest of the royals have followed the late Queen’s example.
To have the kinds of bonds we saw between Carole, Princess Anne, Zara and Mike at Cheltenham, it’s likely they spend time together behind the scenes, perhaps at events hosted by the Waleses. Thankfully for fans there will also likely be a few more instances where at the very least Carole and Zara cross paths again in public.
Royal Ascot is coming up in June and Zara Tindall and Carole Middleton have both attended that regularly in the past. This could mean we get to see even more brilliant moments between the royal women that showcase their friendship.
