Game of Crowns: Elizabeth, Camilla, Kate, and the Throne (28 page)

With no defined role within the Royal Family and no invitations forthcoming from Clarence House, Kate would have to act if she was going to keep her place at the royal table. After a full month of virtual invisibility, Kate took her mother’s advice and showed up with a girlfriend, uninvited and unannounced, at one of the most important thoroughbred racing events of the season—the Cheltenham Gold Cup. It was no coincidence that the Prince of Wales and his wife were also in attendance.

Determined that her daughter not be overlooked in the crowd, Carole lent Kate her tall, Russian-style fur hat. Not surprisingly, reporters swarmed around Kate from the moment she set foot on the racecourse grounds. Moments later, she was whisked away to join Charles and Camilla in the royal box.

Ironically, Camilla was especially glad to see Kate. After years of skulking in the background as Charles’s mistress, the Duchess was still uncomfortable in her new role as a full-fledged member of the Royal Family. As she prepared to present the trophy to the winning horse and jockey, Camilla was clearly relieved to have William’s beautiful girlfriend on hand to soak up some of the attention.

The next day, Kate got an added boost when William was sprung from Sandhurst for a weekend to compete in alumni games at Eton. This time, they were openly amorous in a way they had never been before, hugging and kissing in full view of spectators and the press.

If Carole worried that her daughter had somehow fallen off the royal radar, she shouldn’t have. At William’s behest, Charles paid
out of his own pocket to provide Kate with round-the-clock armed protection. Meanwhile the Queen, who had yet to meet Kate, had read and heard enough about her to form what her private secretary called “a highly favorable opinion” of William’s “young lady.” By way of giving her grandson a slight nudge, she handed him the keys to a completely renovated, three-bedroom cottage in a pine-forested corner of Balmoral known as Brochdhu, not far from Birkhall.

Kate would have to wait to learn her fate, but Camilla was already living hers. Just days after nervously presenting the Cheltenham Cup, she and Charles set off on a two-week tour of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and India. Contending with flies, sand, wind, and temperatures that hovered around 108 degrees (“It almost did me in,” Camilla later allowed), the Prince and the Duchess never complained. As she prepared to sign the guest book at a Sikh shrine in Punjab, someone accidentally pulled the chair out from under Camilla, sending her crashing to the floor. All the way down, a reporter observed, the Duchess “managed to keep smiling.”

Apparently she had good reason to smile. In their zeal to impress the future Charles III, the Saudi royal family showered Camilla with, well, a king’s ransom in precious jewels—including two blinding ruby-and-diamond necklaces valued at $l.8 million each. Rubies, the Saudis had learned, were the Duchess of Cornwall’s favorite gem.

APRIL 21, 2006

SHE EMERGED FROM WINDSOR CASTLE
into the April sunshine, a familiar figure in a pink wool coat and matching hat, the ever-present
handbag dangling from the crook of her arm. On cue, the band of the Irish Guards struck up “Happy Birthday” as the Queen waded into a crowd of twenty-five thousand Union Jack–waving well-wishers. She later hosted a tea at Buckingham Palace for ninety-nine people who also happened to be turning eighty on that same day, and clapped with delight when she was shown an aerial photograph of five hundred crew members spelling out “Happy 80th “ on the deck of the aircraft carrier HMS
Illustrious
.

That evening she stood on the front steps of the newly refurbished Kew Palace, once home to George III, and gazed up in childlike wonder at a fireworks display while the Royal Marine Band played a selection of Beatles songs and show tunes. Then, along with twenty-five members of her family, she dined in front of a fire in the white-paneled dining room on smoked salmon, Morecambe Bay shrimp, and juniper-roast loin of Sandringham venison.

Seated to the Queen’s right was Charles. To her left, William. The Duchess of Cornwall, seated directly opposite the Queen, appeared subdued throughout the evening. Not so the birthday girl. “That day,” said Countess Mountbatten, the Queen was “as happy as I have ever seen her.”

With reason. Flanked by her son and her grandson, she could be reasonably assured that the monarchy would last at least two more generations. She would have been happier still, of course, if Kate had been sitting at the table. Always careful not to push William—or for that matter any of her children or grandchildren—on the subject of matrimony, the Queen gently inquired about Miss Middleton and left it at that.

After a brief (and much-photographed) frolic with her Prince on the exclusive island enclave of Mustique in the Grenadines,
Kate cleared another hurdle when she was invited to attend the wedding of Camilla’s daughter Laura Parker Bowles to Harry Lopes, grandson of the late Lord Astor of Hever and a former Calvin Klein underwear model. It was Kate’s first Royal Family wedding, and, noted the
Sunday Telegraph
, a “significant step forward” in her relationship with the Heir.

That step was taken in spite of Camilla; the mother of the bride was determined that neither she nor her only daughter be eclipsed by Kate, and initially included neither her nor Harry’s stunning steady girlfriend, Chelsy Davy, on the guest list. It was only after Kate argued that her absence would set tongues wagging that William forced the issue. “Kate and I will be there, Papa,” he told the Prince of Wales. “Please tell Camilla that we are both looking forward to it.”

With a royal engagement seemingly just over the horizon, Kate’s ferociously ambitious, social-climbing grandmother succumbed to lung cancer on July 21, 2006. “Lady Dorothy” Goldsmith, a lifelong chain smoker, was seventy-one. According to a Goldsmith cousin, the matriarch “came from nothing, but she always behaved like a queen. She was completely thrilled that her own granddaughter might become one.”

At this point, William was spending almost as much time in the company of Kate’s family as his own. When he and Kate weren’t ordering take-out and watching videos at the Middletons’ Chelsea flat, he got behind the wheel of a royal Land Rover and, with four bodyguards in tow, drove the thirty-three miles from Sandhurst to Oak Acre.

Charles had already given permission for William and Kate to have their own room at Highgrove—rather than go through the charade of being assigned separate bedrooms. Things were the
same at Oak Acre, where William fell into an easy rhythm with the comparatively unstuffy, affable Middleton clan. Since Carole had not yet managed to kick her pack-a-day habit, it was also one of the few places where the Prince felt free to smoke. Soon William, who always called his own father “Papa,” was referring to Michael Middleton as “Dad.” William refrained at first from calling Carole “Mom,” presumably out of deference to Diana.

Over the next several months, William and Kate popped up everywhere together—sunning themselves on the Mediterranean resort island of Ibiza off the coast of Spain, popping in and out of London nightspots, turning heads at the high-profile weddings of their blue-blooded friends. But when she heard through the Clarence House grapevine that Britain’s hard-working monarch was asking why William’s girlfriend didn’t have a job, Kate rushed to land one.

IN THE MEANTIME, THE QUEEN
found herself under the microscope when the Stephen Frears–directed film
The Queen
was released that fall. The movie, in which Dame Helen Mirren delivered a nuanced and ultimately sympathetic portrayal of Elizabeth as both benighted monarch and loving grandmother, imagined what it was like for the Queen during those precarious days following Diana’s death.

Asssured by those closest to her that
The Queen
was good for the Royal Family and the institution of the monarchy because it humanized the sovereign, Elizabeth nevertheless refused to see the movie on the grounds that to see someone else portray her on screen would be “irritating.” During one of their weekly audiences, she even mentioned the movie to Prime Minister Tony
Blair. “I’d just like you to know,” she said, “that I’m not going to watch it. Are you?”

Blair gave Her Majesty the response she wanted. “No,” he said. “Of course not.” Of course, he did, and so did Charles, Camilla, William, Kate, Kate’s parents, and virtually all the other members of the Queen’s family. None mentioned this to Elizabeth, and for one principal reason. While the Queen, Charles, and Blair were depicted favorably, the Duke of Edinburgh was not.

The Queen
garnered great critical acclaim and was a worldwide box office success, earning Mirren an Academy Award as Best Actress. Ironically, the actress had always been an outspoken antimonarchist republican and in 1996 even turned down an appointment as CBE (Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire); still no fan of the Royal Family in 2003, Mirren had to be persuaded that year to accept a damehood. Now, Dame Helen described herself as a dedicated “Queenist.”

During her Oscar acceptance speech, Mirren praised “Elizabeth Windsor” for maintaining “her dignity, her sense of duty, and her hairstyle” for more than a half-century. “She’s had her feet planted firmly on the ground, her hat on her head, her handbag on her arm, and she’s weathered many, many storms, and I salute her courage and her consistency. Ladies and gentleman,” she concluded, holding her Oscar high, “I give you the Queen!”

A year later at Ascot, the Queen asked Mirren to join her for tea in the royal box. “Hello,” the Queen said as Mirren curtsied. “It’s lovely to meet you.” The two women talked about the horses running that day, and Mirren, who was never quite sure how the monarch felt about her portrayal, left feeling “very touched to be invited. I wouldn’t have been invited to tea,” Mirren told
Vanity
Fair
’s Sally Bedell Smith, “if she had hated the film.” (In 2015, Mirren won a Best Actress Tony Award for portraying Elizabeth II yet again in
The Audience
, a fictional account of the Queen’s private weekly meetings with twelve prime ministers over sixty-three years.)

Elizabeth recognized that
The Queen
had given a huge boost to her image. Even the notoriously taciturn Men in Gray were pleased, informing the woman Diana called “The Boss” that the film’s release had even had a positive impact on British tourism. More specifically, she was also told that
The Queen
, set predominantly at Balmoral, had spurred travel to the region and ignited a sudden explosion of tartan plaids on fashion runways and in magazine spreads.

While audiences around the world sought insight into the iconic Elizabeth’s personality on the silver screen, Kate searched for gainful employment. “The Queen doesn’t expect the people around her to work as hard as she does,” said Lady Joseph, wife of the noted British statesman Keith Joseph. “But she does expect them to work.”

IN LATE NOVEMBER, KATE WAS
hired by Jigsaw, the British clothing store chain, as an assistant buyer for the company’s junior accessories line. According to Jigsaw founder Belle Robinson, the part-time position gave Kate the flexibility she needed so that she could “drop everything at a moment’s notice” if that’s what her prince required. At the end of Kate’s first day at work, Robinson suggested she duck out the back to avoid the press. Instead, Kate obliged photographers by marching out the front entrance and smiling for a moment before sliding behind the wheel of her car.

The next morning, Her Majesty saw the front-page photos of William’s girlfriend leaving after a hard day on the job—precisely as Kate had intended. Just a few days later, those same tabloids were filled with pictures of Kate at Sandringham, carrying several bloody game birds that had just been shot by the Heir. Around her neck were the binoculars William had given her the previous year for Christmas. “How sad,” observed the legendary French movie bombshell-turned-animal-rights-advocate Brigitte Bardot. “She was trying to win William and his family. But this is not the way to get a man. And I do know one or two things about it, you know.”

Bardot’s remarks only pushed the Queen more squarely into Kate’s corner. Elizabeth had come in for plenty of criticism from animal rights activists before, especially after she was caught on video clubbing a pheasant to death with her walking stick after it was brought to her, still thrashing, by one of Philip’s hunting dogs. Her Majesty, a Palace spokesman explained at the time, was only acting quickly to put the bird out of its misery—something she was rather expert at, since she’d been required to beat not-quite-dead animals to death several times before. “Miss Bardot,” the Queen told her former private secretary, “is a silly woman who has absolutely no idea what she’s talking about. She wasn’t a terribly good actress either, as I recall.”

Kate ramped things up even more when she showed up at William’s graduation from Sandhurst wearing a scarlet coat, high leather boots, and black hat. She had not been invited to sit with the Queen, Philip, Charles, and Camilla in the royal box (no-show Second Lieutenant Harry was on duty), but Kate and her parents had scarcely been banished to the hinterlands. Sitting alongside them in the front row of the general stand were two of
William’s three godfathers, King Constantine of Greece and Norton Knatchbull, the eighth Baron Brabourne.