OPINION:
Great thinkers, Chinese philosophers and myriad Instagram quotes have a lot to say about silence but if anyone really wants to learn about the awesome power of keeping one's lips zipped, look no further than Kate, Duchess of Cambridge.
Early on Thursday, the royal and shirt dress aficionado popped up, after five weeks away from the spotlight, along with her kids (three) and husband (one; future King).
There she was, her blow-dry bouncing perfectly in the later summer sunshine as she and husband Prince William, Duke of Cambridge took their "gang" - Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis - for a "taster" day at their new school, Lambrook, in Berkshire. (Was Kate wearing a shirt dress? I think you know the answer already.)
A variety of British news outlets all promptly posted the same brief piece of footage on social media showing la famille Cambridge walking up the school's driveway, meeting headmaster Jonathan Perry and then proceeding inside. Scintillating stuff, I know.
VIDEO: New school day today for George, Charlotte and Louis.
— Chris Ship (@chrisshipitv) September 7, 2022
All now at Lambrook School near Ascot after the family moved house to the Windsor estate.
Mum and Dad took them into school earlier for their ‘taster day’. pic.twitter.com/v9okG0qhOI
However, in the one minute and 23 second clip, during which Kate says nothing of any note, the 40-year-old managed to prove her sister-in-law Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, patently and unequivocally wrong.
See, last week Meghan gave her first print interview since 2017 to New York magazine's The Cut and took some time out of her busy schedule of talking about compassion to reflect on her previous stint as a card-carrying HRH.
During the wide-ranging conversation that covered Meghan, Meghan's thoughts on Meghan, and Meghan, one of the things that she and journalist Allison P. Davis touched on was the British media.
First, the former Suits star made the unsubstantiated claim that some in the press had "called] my children the N-word" before later, as Davis wrote, "she'd remarked upon how, if Archie were in school in the UK, she'd never be able to do school pick-up and drop-off without it being a royal photo call with a press pen of 40 people snapping pictures".
"Sorry, I have a problem with that. That doesn't make me obsessed with privacy. That makes me a strong and good parent protecting my child," Meghan commented.
Now, dozens and dozens of leering cameras aimed at a small child whose only "sin" is to be born into the British royal family? That would be a nasty business indeed … if it was borne out by the facts.
In this week's video of the Cambridges doing the school drop-off, there are not one but two future Kings and yet the family easily outnumbers the media contingent who covered the event. (According to the Times, there was only a designated camera person, photographer and reporter present.)
"A press pen of 40 people snapping pictures"? I don't think so.
Ever since George was in very short, short pants there has been an understanding between Fleet Street and Kensington Palace.
In 2015, after issuing a warning to the more predatory elements of the press, they all came to an agreement. William and Kate would, on occasion, wheel out their kids to be splashed across front pages and in return, the red top tabloids would not send snappers to climb up trees to try to photograph the young HRHs on Kensington's best slippery dips.
Yes, there is something uncomfortable about parents having to make a bargain involving their kids' privacy, trading away part of their childhood for the greater good of a 1000-year-old institution, a sort of horribly postmodern Lion King-esque moment, but this was a deal built on pragmatism.
While it is the photos of a clearly distressed Diana running through the streets of Chelsea or Knightsbridge we think of when it comes to complicated and fraught relationships with the media, there were two young boys who also ended up caught up in the melee.
Clearly, both Princes suffered as a result of the constant level of media intrusion they were forced to deal with, tiny victims of the press and paparazzi culture of the day.
Both Meghan's husband, Prince Harry, and Prince William have spoken about the rapacious press that was a constant part of their mother's life and their childhood.
Harry said in 2017, "The damage for me was being a little boy aged 8, 9, 10, whatever it was, wanting to protect your mother and finding it very difficult seeing her very upset.
"About every single time she went out there'd be a pack of people waiting for her.
"And I mean a pack, like a pack of dogs, followed her, chased her, harassed her, called her names, spat at her, tried to get a reaction to get that photograph of her lashing out, get her upset."
However, those days are thankfully long past. George, Charlotte and Louis will never have truly normal childhoods, not when they have to spend the occasional weekend on the Buckingham Palace balcony waving to the masses or when a Range Rover packed with gun-toting specialist police officers trails their every step.
But, still, the family manage to do a slew of quotidian things entirely unmolested by anyone with a camera like go to the supermarket or play weekend sport.
If Harry and Meghan had chosen to remain in Britain, their son Archie and daughter Lilibet would be similarly covered by this agreement with the press and the rules set out by the Independent Press Standards Organisation.
While the Sussexes might have chosen the "freedom" of life in California where they can make hundreds of millions of dollars worth of deals and talk about compassion, they face a very different future.
In 2020, Meghan was photographed by the paparazzi walking with Archie on Vancouver Island before a drone sent up by the X17 agency took shots of the little boy playing in the garden of the massive, borrowed Los Angeles home the family were staying in. (The Duke and Duchess subsequently launched legal action and won in both instances.)
Likewise, last year, Meghan was snapped while heavily pregnant by a lurking pap with her young son on the way to his Montecito preschool.
The irony of the Duchess' "press pen" comments is that had they stayed in Britain, there would be at least some protections in place helping to ensure that Archie and Lili, seventh and eighth in line to the throne, could leave their front door and not worry about being relentlessly chased.
(I also find the abject lack of self-awareness of the Duchess talking about the horrors of the media and then loading up journalist Davis into the car to fetch Archie from school pretty wild.)
What William and Kate unintentionally proved to the world this week was that so much has thankfully changed for royal kids since the Wild West years of the 80s and 90s in terms of the media.
Amazing what you can do in one minute and in a shirt dress isn't it?
• 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.
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