Rare Princess Kate act the world hasn't seen for 583 days
It's been a hot minute. Or more precisely, 582 days.
It has been a serious stretch since the princess gave us a real showing of her tiara chops but on Tuesday night UK time proved she has lost none of her ability to make wearing a priceless, antique diamond topper look like a piece of cake.
Or should that be 'gateaux' given that the princess, at the time of writing, along with about 160 guests was probably still enjoying petit fours as the French state banquet at Windsor Castle drew to a close.
History books, take note: It was the first time the world had seen the princess in a tiara in years.
Oh, but it has been a diamond-y drought and you have to go back to 2023 for the last time the Princess of Wales appeared at a white-tie royal do.
Hours before the banquet, it had looked touch whether this moment would happen at all.
Buckingham Palace only confirmed Kate's attendance a slim 90 minutes before it started and as she was probably busily working her GhD tongs.
Masterfully turned out in couture, she and Prince William then left their three children with their trustiest under footman and the UberEats app open and made their way three minutes up the road to the Castle for the banquet honouring French President Emmanuel Macron.
On the menu for Kate, supreme of chicken, iced parfait and the chance to sit next to Monsieur le Presidente, a man who has a certain je ne sais quoi which might be his willingness to wear a shirt unbuttoned to the navel and or all of his lovely millions.
For the princess, as far as nights out go, a banquet and hours of small talk limited to the weather, the delights of cheese and whether Macron has the inside running on any new Cèline is hardly up there with a candlelit supper at Le Manoir aux Quat'Saisons.
However Tuesday's tiara outing is a milestone moment as she continues the slog back to full power and normal HRH steam after a dramatic few weeks that must have done a number on courtiers' nerves.
In June, the Princess of Wales dramatically pulled out of going to Ascot less than hour before she was set to arrive, causing a 'real sense of panic' inside the Palace, per the Daily Beast's Tom Sykes.
'Rumours had briefly swirled…that the future queen had been taken unwell and either needed to see a doctor or had been rushed to the hospital,' Sykes reported.
Also last month the Daily Mail's Rebecca English offered new insight into the severity of things, sensationally revealing that the Princess of Wales 'is fortunate to even be speaking of recovery.'
Just last week, Kate herself emotionally spoke about her struggles, even after finishing chemotherapy, and talked about 'putting on a brave face' after treatment.
'It's like 'I can crack on, get back to normal' but actually the phase afterwards is really difficult,' she said while speaking to patients and volunteers at a cancer centre. 'You're not able to function normally at home.
'You have to find your new normal and that takes time.'
Luckily for all of us tiara-philes, Tuesday's 'new normal' involved a resumption of some A- grade storybook princessing but elsewhere, she and William are quietly ushering in fresh norms of their own.
As the banquet got under way, the Waleses' official social media accounts released a new portrait of the couple, appearing to be taken in the garden of their Adelaide Cottage home ahead of the evening.
This is the second time in a month we have seen the prince and princess do this - break the invisible boundary that has always existed between big showpiece state events and their private world, putting out a shot of them seemingly at-home and all done up before trotting along to join King Charles.
There was even more 'new' yet on Tuesday with Princess of Wales too doing her bit for Anglo-French relations by wearing outfits from Christian Dior and Givenchy for the first time, a rare high farrrshon moment for the princess who tends to favour a small retinue of British labels.
With her New Look-inspired Dior suit and red silk evening gown with cape, the Princess of Wales did not come here to play.
(Interestingly, Dior looks that figured prominently in Meghan, The Duchess of Sussex 20- months on the palace clock and the famed couturier created a bespoke suit for Prince Harry, The Duke of Sussex to wear to his father's coronation. Likewise, Meghan wore Givenchy to tie the knot, the label at the point helped by Brit Claire Waight Keller.
In 2024, Sarah Burton, who made Kate's wedding dress, was appointed to take over.)
With the Windsor Castle dishwashers finally staked and the Macrons tucked up in bed, it would not be a surprise if there were sighs of well-bred relief all round.
The palace is exceedingly lucky that the Princess of Wales was up to going to the state banquet after a burst blood vessel in Charles' eye made for a confronting image of His Majesty.
As a palace insider told The Beast's Sykes: 'Kate has saved the day. The only thing the newspapers will be reporting on tomorrow is her presence.'
Err, and websites too.
What also did not go unnoticed was how giggly William and Kate had appeared earlier in the day during formal proceedings, the duo behaving like a couple of freshly besotted undergrads, not two people who have been married for 14 years and have probably long since stopped shutting the bathroom door.
As the French might say, with a suitably Gallic dose of eyebrow-wriggling innuendo, oh hon hon hon!
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News.com.au
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For decades and decades, a staple of royal news reporting rounds was the Prince Philip Gaffe. Once, twice a year, the indomitable Duke of Edinburgh would be shunted off to make small talk with Strathclyde youth workers or to barrack for Britain somewhere that didn't broadcast The Archers and of his trademark 'quips' would come. Blunt, rude, insensitive, cheeky or just a bit racist, he did all sorts. And so here we are today, more than four years after his death and the duke's very forthright way with words has put him back in the news, after a new book revealed the four words he said after Prince Harry and Meghan, The Duke and Duchess of Sussex's 2018 wedding. Not 'Where's the bloody bar?' or 'I want cake now' or 'What's a Suits star?' Rather the Duke of Edinburgh allegedly offered a brusque assessment of the nuptials that does not sound glowing. 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However, what is clear is that after the great rupture of Megxit and the Sussexes' initial couple of years of professional twinning, doing a one-off Spotify special, launching their Archewell Foundation, and making the six-part Harry & Meghan attached at the proverbial hip, since 2023 their careers have split off from one another. Meghan has been setting herself up as a lifestyle entrepreneur, the doomed American Riviera Orchard morphing into the successful As Ever and with the second series of her Netflix show With Love Meghan set to debut later this month. She's been making wine and spreads and waves and doing podcasts and there is a Christmas special in the pipeline. However, Harry has cut something of a more lonely figure, having resigned (along with his co-founder and the board) from Sentebale, the charity he co-founded with Lesotho's Prince Seeiso, earlier this year over a falling out with the organisation's chairman. The recent announcement that the Sussexes have secured a new but reduced deal with Netflix largely seemed like primarily a win for the duchess, with her putting out the statement and the duke having no solo projects of his own. The mind positively boggles thinking about what Philip would make of Sussexes circa 2025 if he were still alive, let alone the very concept of flower sprinkles. I think we can definitively say he never once spent a single second thinking about how he could 'show up lovingly', as Meghan says in the new With Love trailer, nor did he ever consider the spiritual uplift of the decorative ice cube. Less than three years after the Sussexes' wedding, the royal family returned to St George's Chapel for his funeral, only weeks after the duke and duchess' paint-peeling Oprah Winfrey interview. Harry flew back to farewell his grandfather, while Meghan, seven months pregnant, was 8,500 km away at home at doctor's orders. According to Tom Bower's Revenge, Harry's remaining grandparent made her own blunt call, allegedly saying to aides, 'Thank goodness Meghan is not coming'. You have to wonder if, for the duchess having just laid out in painful detail her experiences of bias and of a callous disregard for her wellbeing, the feeling might just have been mutual.
