Kate Middleton's resolve is due to be tested to the limit with a shocker of a year ahead. Photo / Instagram
OPINION:
Generally, it's hard to feel sorry for someone who is A) from a wealthy family, B) married into an even wealthier family), and C) can borrow a priceless diamond tiara or three whenever she fancies adding a touch of sparkle to her WFH ensemble.
But when it comes to Kate, Duchess of Cambridge, we might have to make an exception.
While she might live in a four-storey, 20-room "apartment" in Kensington Palace and has the resources to keep herself in hot and cold Emilia Wickstead frocks, make no mistake, the woman is facing down a hellish 2022.
On paper, it should be a stellar year for her and husband Prince William. They are both set to turn 40 (girls weekend to Malaga to celebrate with Pips?) and with travel bans lifting, there is only so long any self-respecting Chelsea girl can go without a jaunt to Mustique. (Basil's Bar, where they are regulars, is calling.)
But despite this, the immutable fact is that the Cambridges are staring down the barrel of a very rocky 12-months that will expose old and have the entire royal family bracing themselves for another global PR crisis.
Let's start with how much of the royal family we will be seeing on TV screens in the near future.
At some stage later this year or early next the film Spencer will be released. Kristen Stewart stars as Diana, Princess of Wales in the big-screen outing that will follow the events of three days spent at Sandringham some time around 1992.
That year, the cracks in the Diana and husband Prince Charles' union had become all too visible, with a disastrous tour of South Korea during which their misery was on full, sour show. In November, they announced their separation.
Season five of Netflix's Emmy favourite, and perennial scourge of anyone who likes facts, The Crown will also land in 2022. The next instalment in the regal soapie will pick up in the early 90s and cover Diana's death in 1997 ensuring that the narrative arc will likely be driven by the miserable disintegration of Charles and Diana's union.
While in previous years the hit show has dredged up any number of embarrassing and painful episodes in royal history, this season could very well be the most wrenching and hurtful for William (and yes, Prince Harry too) yet.
In the early '90s Diana secretly collaborated with Andrew Morton on his incendiary Diana: Her True Story, Charles admitted to the world he had been unfaithful, and the princess shook the monarchy by going on TV to reveal just how loose her husband's zipper really was.
Over the course of the same years, the prince and princess went about not-so-surreptitiously trying to scalp one another in the press to the delight of the red top reading public.
The War of the Wales' was an unseemly, sad spectacle to watch from afar and must have been exponentially worse for the couple's sons stuck in the thick of it. Now those same boys face having to watch as that dismal chapter is morbidly resuscitated for our viewing pleasure.
For Kate that means having to watch her husband suffer through seeing some of the most traumatic parts of his childhood dredged up and picked over like carrion. (And by the company paying her brother-in-law Harry millions no less.)
There's another element in all this palace-baiting at play. It's hard to imagine how Spencer and the new season of The Crown will do anything but reinforce the image of the monarchy as a rigid, even callous, monolith that has caused so much suffering.
Kate is now staring down the prospect of having to sit idly by while the institution that she has dedicated her life to is dragged brutally over the coals and faces a fresh round of public condemnation. Oh goodie …
Compounding the pain for William in all of this is the fact that next year will mark 25 years since Diana was killed in Paris, another terribly sad milestone in a two and a half decades of terribly sad milestones. On Mother's Day Kensington Palace revealed that every year the Cambridges' three kids make cards for Diana. Princess Charlotte's read, in part, "Papa is missing you."
Then, we get to the Queen's Platinum Jubilee, an event that should on paper be a cause for mass celebration – quick, break out the good bubbly Jenkins! The nation will come together thanks to a four-day bank holiday long weekend to celebrate the seven, – count 'em – decades Her Majesty has spent on the throne.
However, part of next year's events will likely be the palace publicly positioning William and Kate as King and Queen-in-waiting. Coming with that will not only be added pressure for Kate to put on a flawless performance but she will have to find a way to deal with the very practical stresses of being a mum-of-three with a full-time (though highly unusual) job.
Yes, the family might have a nanny and a housekeeper (and probably a battalion of other staffers) but William and Kate have time and again said they want their children to have as normal an upbringing as possible. That means, for example, that one of them does the school run, every day, without fail.
What is going to make that dedication to normalcy so much harder once Operation: Future Queen starts is that this involves endless meetings, briefs, strategy sessions and military-grade primping. So too will the Cambridges potentially start to increase the number of public engagements and outings they undertake.
There are only 24 hours in the day, a fact that is as true for HRHs as it is for you and I. And while Kate might not have the same childcare worries most people do, she is still a devoted mum trying to find a way to deal with the burden of an increasing number of competing demands.
Last, and certainly not least, we get to the launch of Harry's memoir, set to hit shelves some time next year. The palace now faces the possibility of a new barrage of highly damaging revelations about the royal family.
The now-California resident is reported to have received a $27 million advance for the work. (Proceeds from the book will go to charity but the New York Post's Page Six column has reported that "royal insiders questioned whether he would still be keeping the big-money advance.")
That sort of number is surely not being thrown around for 200-odd pages of recycled Wikipedia facts and some inspirational guff. Also the fact that he is working with co-writer Pulitzer Prize-winner J.R. Moehringer suggests the book will be quite the exhaustive excavation of Harry's royal life.
Given this is the first time a senior member of the Queen's family has ever penned a tell-all, the entire house of Windsor should be sweating through their M & S unmentionables right now.
The prospect of Harry really applying himself to airing the family's dirty laundry in print should be keeping courtiers and HRHs alike up at night.
All of this — the TV, the Diana anniversary, stepping up to Queen-in-waiting, will pile pressure on Kate, as both a wife and as the blow-dried buoyancy device she has become for the palace's PR machine.
In 2022, the monarchy (and her husband) will need her to a degree which we've never seen before. Hardier souls would buckle at the prospect of having to bear so much, because no less than the future of the monarchy will rest on her very slim shoulders.
If things falter now, if the royal house is truly overtaken by bad press then the odds of the institution ever reclaiming the public mandate will evaporate.
See? Told you. Even future princesses and queens can have it tough. I bet that Mustique getaway can't come soon enough …
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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