Kate Middleton Almost Refused Her Royal Title
Following Queen Elizabeth II’s passing in September 2022, King Charles named his son, Prince William, and his daughter-in-law, Kate Middleton, as the new Prince and Princess of Wales. But did you know that there was a brief moment when Princess Catherine didn’t want to use the new royal title that originally belonged to her late mother-in-law, Princess Diana?
In Robert Jobson’s upcoming novel, Catherine, The Princess of Wales: A Biography of the Future Queen (which is set to hit bookstore shelves on August 6), the royal author details how Princess Catherine almost refused the title to avoid any “stressful” comparisons to Princess Diana, who went by the Princess of Wales until she died in a car crash in 1997.
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According to an excerpt shared by the Daily Mail on July 26, Middleton debated whether or not she wanted to inherit the royal title closely tied to Princess Diana (AKA “The People’s Princess”) after she got married to Prince William in April 2011. “[Princess Catherine] knew she’d inevitably be compared with Diana, whose untimely death had provoked such a tsunami of anger and grief. And she was right,” Jobson wrote.
He continued, “Kate found all such talk stressful. Indeed, it got to the point where she felt she might follow Camilla (who opted to become Duchess of Cornwall) in refusing—when the time came—to be known as HRH Princess of Wales.”
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Once King Charles acceded to the throne after his mother’s death, Princess Catherine “accepted her promotion with good grace, out of respect for her husband and the King.” Jobson added, “Enough time had passed to make the title more palatable, and Catherine had been on the world stage long enough to be appreciated for her own qualities.”
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