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In this golden age of the conspiracy theory, it takes something more to break through, to capture the attention of anyone jaded by a culture of nonstop speculation. I didn’t understand right away what more the weeks-long swirl around Catherine, Princess of Wales, had over all the other conspiracy theories we’ve recently endured (dead people voting, Taylor and Travis as a ruse coordinated by the president, etc.). At first, I thought it was the details: princess, ambulance caravan, a Photoshop disaster, cloaked press protocols—it’s all so literary and high-stakes. Outside of the one time we were sitting in a diner on the Upper East Side and a girl screamed Prince Harry was two blocks up—we sprinted to see him, he waved—my friends and I almost never discuss the royals. But at present, I have four different group texts concerned with Kate Middleton on my phone, each one its own urgent and completely useless investigation. “I need to check on Kate quick,” I’ve been telling my husband, before we start TV at night.
A few nights ago, when I did this, I saw the TMZ clip of Kate and Will at Windsor Farm Shop, a food market owned by the palace. A month ago, I couldn’t tell you what color eyes Kate Middleton has, but yesterday I leaped from my chair, ranting about her face shape. I compared notes with my friends; we agreed, that just didn’t look like Kate. I heard two podcasters call the Windsor Farm Shop footage “the alleged footage”; I relaxed. I didn’t want it to be over, I realized. Not this way.
Why not? If that was Kate, she’s walking. Smiling. I don’t need a high-res image to be able to tell her hair was very clean. If the clip was staged, it’s easy to understand why. The woman in that tape is okay, and that’s what we’re all supposed to be after: proof that Kate’s okay.
All the video proved to me, though, was that this wasn’t what I was really after. My interest, it turns out, has hurtled past curiosity and worry. I want something more than for Kate to just be alive. Of all the things I read about the princess over the past few weeks, this one stands out the most: “Kate Middleton is different from Diana: ‘more eager to please.’” This is something we have no business knowing firsthand, yet we’ve intuited it, haven’t we? Kate's game approach to royal life felt especially articulated in the wake of a self-aware, self-possessed American princess—Meghan Markle—taking one look at the palace’s vicious ways and going no thanks, last I checked I get one life.
Until now, the possibility of Kate’s story going the same way seemed remote. She has always presented as a people pleaser of Navy SEAL levels: She is thin enough, white enough, connected enough, with the right hair, manners, pedigree, and education. Yet none of this helped her ascend and solidify status within the monarchy as much as her extremely high levels of tolerance and discipline did. She never stumbled out of a club, or cursed out a paparazzo. With billions of us watching, she chose the right dress for the wedding, hit her marks, waved from the carriage, smiled and smiled.
Kate is the good daughter, good wife, good daughter-in-law, good mom. In reality, she is someone who stood outside a hospital in heels for the worldwide press while leaking afterbirth. But it’s easy to slide her avatar into a thousand different realities. It’s easy to imagine Kate, had she not become a royal, bugging her siblings to get back to her about their parents’ anniversary dinner. Smiling through her teeth and saying “Sure!” when someone from her kids’ school grabs her, asks if she has anywhere to be after dropoff, could she help with something for a few hours? Turning the other cheek when her mother-in-law, for the fifty thousandth time, sneaks her children candy with red dye in it, though she’s been clear red dye is off limits.
In short, it is easy to imagine Kate living and dying a good girl. Someone who never said no, complained, or caused a scene. This is an approach to life prescribed explicitly within the royal family, but these are also qualities we still treat as praiseworthy in women (and, I should say, men, too—there are sons and brothers and husbands out there swallowing themselves to keep the peace). We still teach girls that Kate is the way, and that Kate herself is the proof. Look how far you can get being good! has always been the moral of Kate’s story—a fairy tale held in counterpoint to countless famous women branded as crazy, dumb, or sluts. You can get far, Kate taught us. Almost unbelievably far. That doesn’t mean you can win. It doesn’t give you any power.
In the past two weeks, the exemplary tale has turned cautionary. What did Kate get, for being good? What likely happened with that photo is the thing that feels most true to the dynamics: Someone took old pictures of Kate smiling and boldly made them into a new one, created a moment that did not happen, stole her voice and name for the caption. Then, when they got caught, they blamed her and, in all likelihood, wrote “her” apology “for her.” These tactics might seem like the work of a sinister cabal, but they’re not, at their core. They are the work of a family used to relying on the good daughter not to get mad.
Maybe, in the end, I just want her to be mad. I don’t want her to be at the farm shop with William, laughing it off, forgiving, weighted with things to cook for her children. I want her to tell him off in some lewd way in front of powdered puritans: Suck it, she says, in my fantasy, dynastic china breaking around her. In my fantasy, she’s physically intact, mentally okay, eating Cheetos in her bed and binging the series One Day. When a prim palace aide opens her door without knocking, she shrieks, “Learn to knock!” and gives them the finger, her nails lined with ultra-processed orange dust.
In my fantasy, she gets out. She and Meghan understand each other, finally; Harry makes up the couch. Kate feeds the chickens in the morning. She and Meghan get drunk on tequila sent by Oprah.
“American Riviera Orchard, really?” Kate says.
Meghan throws a pillow at her. “Shut. Up!”
“It’s too many words,” Kate giggles. “I love you, but it’s just, like, one word too much!”
They get ill-advised tattoos. When Kate gets home, she has the spins, and texts from William. Angry ones. Everyone says, But her kids, but her kids are fine for the moment. She knows it, she knows them. She gets they need to see her do this as much as she needs to do it. She puts William on Do Not Disturb and chugs some water. Pulls up memojis, clicks on the rainbow unicorn head, and FaceTimes Charlotte.