Why Kate Middleton is the perfect choice
I used to think they were a pointless couple. But Prince William's choice of bride may just ensure the survival of the monarchy
Alexander Chancellor
The Guardian , Friday 19 November 2010
Suddenly, it all seems completely right. For a long time I dreaded the prospect of Prince William marrying Kate Middleton . I don't quite know why. Perhaps I was put off by Kate's Sloaney way of life, her regular nightclubbing. There was an unhappy reminder here of the fun-loving Sarah Ferguson. I was beginning to feel that a marriage between William and Kate really would mean the end of the British monarchy . They seemed such a pointless couple that only a truly committed monarchist would want to take up the cudgels on their behalf.
But when I tried to imagine the ideal wife for a modern king of England, I found I couldn't. Foreign princesses used to be favoured because of their royal blood; but a foreign princess today would be a big step backwards for a royal family that has spent the last century trying to make us forget its German origins, and she would also risk becoming a hate figure for Britain's vociferous anti-Europeans. But a British woman of aristocratic birth would also now be abad choice. The Queen Mother , whose father was the Earl of Strathmore, was a great success as queen, but she married King George VI at a time when the aristocracy still commanded respect. By the time Prince Charles married Lady Diana Spencer in 1981 this was no longer the case. Diana's personal merits and her huge popularity do not alter the fact that their marriage was a disaster and did great harm to the standing of the monarchy.
Until the Diana catastrophe it had never occurred to the royal family that any woman raised outside its orbit would be able to cope with the peculiar pressures to which royalty is exposed. Diana had seemed ideal on paper, but as it turned out, she found her role as Princess of Wales to be stifling and intolerable. In her nine years as Prince William's girlfriend, Kate Middleton, on the other hand, has already shown herself to be more controlled and more discreet than Diana ever was. I suspect that the Queen's reported enthusiasm for the match is quite genuine, for she must already sense that Kate will cause her far less trouble than either Fergie or Diana.
I now realise how misguided the royal family has been in its insistence on good breeding as a condition for marrying into it. We like to think that we live in a meritocracy. The idea that the institution of the monarchy should be accessible only to people of the right heredity feels quite unacceptable today. And thanks to Diana, the old excuse that only royals or aristocrats have the necessary equipment to handle the job of a monarch's spouse no longer carries any conviction. Until this week we had never heard Kate Middleton speak in public, but her performance during Tom Bradby's ITV interview with her and William was a revelation. She looked far more at ease than Princess Diana ever did, and she spoke with confidence and fine judgment. Only once did she stumble, and this was when Bradby asked her if she felt "intimidated" at the prospect of following in the footsteps of Diana. This made her blabber incoherently until William chipped in to say that "no one is trying to fill my mother's shoes" and that Kate would carve out her own future and do so brilliantly. I found myself believing him.
Kate's voice was pleasant, too, neither too posh nor too affectedly proletarian, like Samantha Cameron's. And somehow she made William seem more decent and more agreeable than I had imagined him to be. In short, they seemed a very nice, ordinary middle-class couple. Both of them have been socially mobile, though in opposite directions. Too much may be made of Kate's descent from coalminers – we probably all have coalminers among our forebears, just as we all have aristocrats among our distant relatives – but, with her public school and university education, she seems clearly higher up the social ladder than her parents, who themselves had climbed up many rungs before her. Meanwhile, William has been climbing down from his standing as an Eton toff to that of a helicopter pilot with a blokey manner, calling children "kids" and his future parents-in-law "Mike and Carole". Kate and William are both, in effect, middle class in the way that most Britons feel themselves to be, and she is glossily pretty in the way that Britons wish of their celebrities.
It now seems quite obvious that royal princes should only look for brides among the middle class. These are the people with whom Britons in general can identify and feel comfortable with. This doesn't necessarily mean an end to the mystery and magic of the monarchy. I expect that in due course Kate will be mythologised as much as any previous queen. There are risks, of course, that she may fall from favour. The wedding may seem too showy and extravagant for these straitened times. She may look too proud or too humble, utter some offensive opinion, or put her foot in it in some other way. But my feeling now is that she is giving the monarchy a better chance of long-term survival than it had only a week ago. Whether or not that is a good thing is a matter of opinion, but personally I have to confess to thinking it is.
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