KATE MIDDLETON: Why women don't want to be her 

IS THE royal love affair over? A survey, commissioned by Newsweek Europe and published by YouGov, contains some startling results that make clear what has been the major change in the British public’s attitude toward the monarchy.

But this is not a shift in terms of opinions about The Queen, Prince Charles or even Prince William — rather it is in terms of the public person of Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, on whom, it seems, the future rests.

The British people remain as one in wishing their universally-admired Queen a long reign yet. But when the day comes and the throne passes to Charles, something else, something less immediately obvious will happen. On that day, the central matriarchal figure of the family will suddenly be Kate, née Middleton.

The role will drop straight through the trapdoor of the generation above her and fall squarely upon her shoulders — for obvious historical reasons, Camilla cannot assume and would not wish to assume such a mantle. Instead, it will be Kate at the centre, surrounded by the throng of Windsor men — Charles, William, Harry, George, and another son perhaps.

She will be daughter-in-law of the King, wife of the King thereafter, sister-in-law to his brother, mother to the King yet to come, grandmother to the monarch beyond — the friend and confidante to all these Kings and heirs of Britain.

She is 32 now and the most intelligent among them. With each passing year, as Britain moves deeper into the 21st century, her position will further crystallise and declare itself. Kate will become the centripetal force around which the monarchy revolves. And in her public person, the 21st-century nation will be represented and seek to reflect its modernity and its ideas of womanhood.

So what is the public attitude towards the Duchess of Cambridge? What does she represent? What is changing? Do women look up to her? Should they? Can she speak to feminism? Do the British people wish her to step forward and inhabit her character, or is their perception that she will remain a blank page on which they write their own version of the future? What does the Duchess of Cambridge mean for the monarchy and therefore Britain itself?

This YouGov survey throws up some fascinating and seemingly contradictory results. Astonishingly, only one per cent of female respondents wish that they could be Kate. A staggering 89% of women have no interest in being Kate even for a single day. Meanwhile, among male respondents, only six per cent wish they were married to Kate and — even more surprising, perhaps — only six per cent wish they were dating Kate. (Imagine the answers to these same questions in 1984.)

When asked “Which of the following things, if any, are you interested in regarding Kate?”, the following answers, among others, came back:

Respondents were selected from all over the country, including Wales and Scotland. They were representative of the whole pie-chart of voters — Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat and even Ukip. They were split roughly 50/50 male and female. And they were taken from every age group from 18 upwards.

By chance, the survey was conducted on the day of the announcement of the Duchess’s pregnancy. And yet when asked which of that day’s news stories they were most interested in, the public rated the news of a second royal baby fourth — only seven per cent being “most interested”. This figure rose among 18- to 24-year-olds, but only to nine per cent. Ahead came the Scottish referendum, then Isis and the Ebola outbreak. Refreshing.

More telling still was that when respondents were then asked which of the stories they believed were the “most important”. On the very day of the announcement, only two per cent of people cited the pregnancy. Hardly anyone. Pollsters expected it to be a little more than that — if only for the one day, given that the other news stories were ongoing.

Interestingly, the Duke and Duchess were very close in third and fourth place respectively as “favourite royal”. Among 18–24-year-olds, they were placed the other way around and in London they are dead equal. (The Queen came second behind Prince Harry, the nation’s favourite royal.)

Conversely though, the public believed Kate’s influence behind the scenes in her relationship with the future king to be substantial — 76% believe she has some influence over William and 50% of those describe that influence as ‘strong’. Indeed, when asked how important the role is that she plays in the royal family, 64% said she was “important”.

And so, a paradoxical portrait starts to emerge. While almost nobody would actually like to be Kate, large numbers believe that she is intelligent (49%) and even larger numbers (65%) saw her as a potentially positive role model. In terms of power and influence, 64% believe that she had some control over “her life generally” rising to 74%, who believed she had “control over how she raises her son, Prince George”.

On the one hand, therefore, we have the portrait of a woman to whom the British public no longer attach themselves emotionally; they are no longer psychologically invested in her life; they do not project their own identities onto her; she is not a repository for the nation’s sense of itself, nor of its dramas.

On the other hand, there is strong evidence that people believe her to be intelligent, strong, responsible and privately influential. This paradoxical perception is perhaps best captured by the fact that 46% of women think she has influence in what she says in public and 41% don’t.

What is going on? The short answer might be that the more childish registers of the public-royal relationship are fading — gone the envy, the hysteria, the adulation, the schadenfreude. The British public seem more prepared to view their relationship with Kate, and therefore with the future of the monarchy, for what it is: a socio-political contract.

At the same time, and as a consequence, public perception of the real person — a human being inhabiting a near-impossibly claustrophobic public space — seems greatly to have developed and matured. Hers is a delicate role comes the message, a life of privileges certainly, but not necessarily of pleasures.

There are dozens of possible reasons for this: the rise of social media and the shrinking of tabloid influence for sure; but chief among them is the public understanding of Kate’s own relatively approachable background. The era of exoticism is over.

Out with the fantasy, in with the reality. Human life, at least in the First World, is now omni-connected. No new star rising can do so without a visible and accessible trail. And, though it happened serendipitously — a marriage made in love — it is not a coincidence that Kate is set to become a major female figurehead of this new firmament.

So what, then, of the Duchess’s role as a 21st-century woman? What is she now? What can she be?

Germaine Greer, the queen of British feminist thinking, shares the general view: “Kate is a great deal more intelligent than the rest of the royals. She has been put in charge of William. She has a bastard of a job,” she says.

But Greer feels sorry for the Duchess and identifies sinister undertones. “The girl is too thin. Meanwhile, she is vomiting her guts up and shouldn’t have been made to go through all this again so soon. It’s not so much that she has to be a womb, but she has to be a mother. I would hope after this one she says, ‘That’s it. No more’.”

When I ask about specifically about feminism, Greer laughs. “Kate is not even allowed to decorate her own houses. Even the wives of the American presidents get to do that. The whole thing is a mad anachronism. The ‘firm’ tell us that the first born will now become the monarch regardless of sex. Well, big fucking deal! Kate is not allowed to have an interest in modern culture, even in art — to collect, to attend openings.

She is made to appear absolutely anodyne. She cannot do or say anything spontaneous. She has learned what she has to do and say and how to do and say it in the approved way.

“A staggering 89% of women have no interest in being Kate even for a single day

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