Kate Middleton, Duchess of Cambridge. Photo / Getty Images
OPINION
What do you get a woman for a birthday who pretty much has everything? We're not talking about a run-of-the-mill big day here, but a landmark one, a birthday that will demand more than a tin of Quality Street and the latest Liane Moriarty. What do you get for a future Queen who is about to hit the big 4-0?
In only a few weeks, Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge will hit this milestone, an event that will likely see the various royal social media accounts trawl out some old shots and Prince William hit Bond St in a sweat. (Just don't buy her binoculars like he recently admitted he did once …)
In the US, supermarket weekly People magazine has got a jump on the occasion, slapping the mum-of-three on the cover of this week's issue with the headline, putting out a story so sickly a more suspicious mind might have thought Carole Middleton herself penned it.
Just in case anyone's counting, this is the Duchess' fourth star turn on the front of the glossy entertainment magazine in the last 12 months, including her second solo outing.
Here's the kicker: Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex? During one of the biggest years of her life, including one in which she accused the royal house of institutional racism and ignoring her pleas for help when her mental health suffered when she welcomed her second child and when she launched her post-Megxit career?
Not a single cover of just her.
(Meghan has appeared twice on covers with Harry, while he has notched up a further two covers without his wife.)
While the cover of People is hardly the most precise barometer of public standing and approval, Kate's continued appearance and Meghan's lack of star billing paints a less than sparkling picture of the Sussexes' Stateside campaign to establish themselves as dazzling public figures.
In fact, nearly two years since they touched down in the United States, they are still struggling to gain traction as the leaders they seem so keen to be.
January 8, which is only three weeks away (and just happens to be the day before Kate's 40th birthday) will mark two years since Harry and Meghan managed to (allegedly) shock the world, the Queen and the corgis by abruptly announcing they were done with the whole crowd-waving and plaque-unveiling racket and were oorrrfff. A new financially independent life awaited them, one where they wouldn't be expected to (as Meghan once did) spend their working days opening new bridges, and could supposedly get away from the intrusive lenses and beaks of the British press.
Off they flew, in January 2020, to Canada where they were holed up in a borrowed (and hideous) mansion to plot their takeover.
The likely territorial division seemed clear. The peppy Sussexes would join the uppermost echelons of the US glitterati - hello Sunday brunches with the Carter-Knowles and Boggle night with the Obamas - while earning squillions and charming the pants of all 350 million adoring Americans while William and Kate and the rest of the royal family were left to enjoy the parochial affections of their little grey island.
Funny that.
Much like every assumption that the world held during those first few febrile months of 2020, nothing has quite panned out the way anyone thought it would, including the Sussexes' post-palace careers.
As we are poised to begin 2022, Harry and especially Meghan are increasingly polarising figures who have failed to build the sort of broad support base that many, including me, expected them to.
Polling done in the US after their Oprah Winfrey interview in March found that while 71 per cent of Americans had either watched it or clips of it, or heard of or read about it, they were hardly sympathetic towards the couple's self-described plight, with only 40 per cent saying they had "a lot or a fair amount of sympathy." Meanwhile, 31 per cent said they had no sympathy for the couple.
When news broke in July this year that Harry was putting his bitten Bic to paper and penning a memoir - for which he is rumoured to have received a stonking $27 million advance - the reception in the US was lukewarm. If his publishers Penguin Random House are hoping to recoup their eight-figure outlay by touting copies of the book in the flyover states, let's hope they have a backup plan, given only one in four Americans surveyed at the time said they were "very or fairly interested" in reading the memoir. (Meanwhile, only 14 per cent of Brits said the same.) Similarly, fewer than half of the stars-and-stripes-waving masses polled said they thought it was appropriate for Harry to be putting out an autobiography.
More recently, attempts by the Duchess of Sussex to insert herself into the political bloodstream, while brandishing her gifted title (so much for her comment to Gloria Steinem that women should be "linked not ranked") have met with middling success at best, with conservative voices delighting in recounting how indifferent they were to her lobbying.
Having spent the last couple of months pushing for paid parental leave, there does not appear to be anything even vaguely resembling a groundswell of support behind the Duchess.
Their excruciatingly cringey Time cover and their faux-royal tour of New York seem to have failed to establish the duo as the power players they seem desperate to be, (though the magazine outing did spawn a tranche of less than flattering memes).
Alongside this is the fact that those members of the royal family left behind, you know, the Queen's relatives who don't boast their own Netflix deals or vegan latte brands, would seem to enjoy a surprising degree of popularity given the presence of not only Kate but William and the Queen on magazine covers.
In fact, next year could see a renewed Windsor assault on the US, with news that the next outing of the Duke of Cambridge's Earthshot Prize will be held in the States, raising the possibility of a royal tour there.
A source close to the couple told Vanity Fair in September that "Team Cambridge is very focused on America and making sure they have a high profile over there. The possibility of them making a high-profile visit is very much on the cards for next year."
Beyond that, the sustained public interest in the Windsors Stateside suggests the American people have not bought the Sussexes' version of events wholesale. The fact People has slapped Kate on the cover, something they would not do if she would not sell well, points to the Duchess still occupying a relatively positive place in American hearts and minds.
None of this augurs well for Harry and Meghan. Fundamental to the Sussexes' continued enjoyment of stonking commercial contracts is being able to bring with them tens if not hundreds of millions of viewers, like streaming Pied Pipers. But whether they can deliver on this remains to be seen.
The pressure on the couple's Netflix and Spotify offerings, when the world finally gets to see and hear them, will be immense – but given their shaky public standing, will their famous names translate to the huge streaming figures many might have once assumed? So far they have announced they are making a children's cartoon and a documentary about Harry's Invictus Games, two projects that are notable only for their lack of creative verve.
Frank Sinatra croons in New York, New York, "If I can make it there, I'll make it anywhere." But what happens if you can't make it there Frank? One pair of US transplants might be looking for an answer to puzzler in the near future.
Daniela Elser is a royal expert and a writer with more than 15 years' experience working with a number of Australia's leading media titles.
Washington Post: Sweatpants? No. But elastic waistbands? Absolutely.