Kate Middleton had a long time to prepare before officially joining the Royal Family. Her long relationship with Prince William stretched all their way back to their days as undergraduates at the University of St Andrews, which meant that she had a decade to learn what being an official part of the monarchy might mean, and she had more than her fair share of understanding on the media scrutiny that comes along with anybody even associated with the House of Windsor.
However long Princess Kate had to see how things worked from the outside looking in when she married William and became the Duchess of Cambridge, she still would have had to have made plenty of adjustments - and none more so when she became a mother. It was at this stage that she carefully set out "life rules" that would help her keep a healthy balance between her royal duties and her responsibilities to her young family, an expert has claimed.
The expert - royal author and editor Robert Jobson - claimed in his new book Catherine, the Princess of Wales : The Biography that these rules were made clear to the most senior royals, Charles and the late Queen back in 2015 when Kate and William were expecting Princess Charlotte. William went to his father and grandmother, the expert claims, and let them know his wife's wishes as she was about to become a mother of two, but these weren't written down in a formal list. Instead what she felt she needed "to grow into her role and said she needed more time to adapt to the peculiarities of royal life".
The expert added, "She was clear from the outset that she would not be pigeonholed into carrying out particular duties and insisted on having her full quota of maternity leave, away from the glare of the media and public. Her priority, she emphasised, would always be her family."
This is a priority that both Kate and William have stuck to over the years, eschewing large numbers of live-in staff the public could assume the royals use in favour of being hands-on parents. The family moved to Adelaide Cottage, Windsor back in 2022, and the four-bedroom property is, by royalty's standards at least, pretty modest. At the time they were reported to have made the move out of their much larger Kensington Palace apartment in part to live closer to the late Queen, and also to ensure more normality and privacy for their three children.
When Kate announced in an emotional video message to the nation that she had begun a course of chemotherapy and would be stepping away from her royal duties, she also made it clear that even as she faced her health challenges she would keep putting her family first, saying: "William and I have been doing everything we can to process and manage this privately for the sake of our young family.
"As you can imagine, this has taken time. It has taken me time to recover from major surgery in order to start my treatment. But, most importantly, it has taken us time to explain everything to George, Charlotte, and Louis in a way that is appropriate for them, and to reassure them that I am going to be OK." The Princess of Wales also appealed for privacy whilst she continued her treatment and focussed on her recovery, both for herself and her three children.
