The new Princess of Wales has been quietly shaking things up, writes Daniela Elser. Photo / AP
OPINION
When you hear 'royal family' what comes to mind? Corgis? Buckingham Palace? That one time the Queen Mother was caught on camera doing the Nazi salute? That King Charles reportedly once had an aide hold a urine specimen bottle? Or that back in the day, Kate, Princess of Wales' nickname for now-husband Prince William was 'big Willy'? (Not quite sure if I should capitalise that last word there...)
But if we are talking about the things we most commonly associate with royalty, we could not leave out tradition, which for them is not some quaint thing Granny does at Christmas but their North Star; it is their Doctrine of Doing It The Way We've Always Done It.
Consider: The House of Windsor (or up until 1917, the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha as they were known before being German was on the nose) has spent basically every summer holiday at Balmoral since Prince Albert bought the property in 1852.
Imagine if you, in 2022, were still expected to spend your precious hols in the same place, doing the same thing as your great, great, great, great, grandfather? These are not people for whom evolution or change comes easily.
Which is why what I am about to tell you is so shocking. Perhaps you should consider sitting down or at least dramatically leaning on a sturdy surface.
Kate, and in some cases William too, has just thrown out a couple of the royal family's longest-standing traditions.
Adios. Sayonara. Auf Wiedersehen.
Like the canning of those horrendous nude cork wedges that Kate wore for years (may they burn in fashion hell for all eternity), the recently upgraded Waleses are reportedly making some very consequential changes while the press are distracted over Prince Harry's memoir and he and Meghan's Netflix TV series. (Guilty as charged.)
The first sign of what they were up to came earlier this month when a story appeared in the Telegraph that largely went unnoticed.
According to the paper's Associate Editor Gordon Raynor, William and Kate are ushering in "a major change" to the "format of official engagements" because these outings have become too "staid". (Only just figure that out now, kids?)
Raynor writes: "Instead of visiting deprived communities, giving them a day in the sun and then hoping money will be raised as a result, the Prince and Princess of Wales want to reverse the process by using the build-up to a visit to generate money, which they can then announce and disburse when they get there."
(An interesting side note: "Friends have said Megxit left [William] having to 'start from scratch' and his 'impact days' are one of the ideas to emerge from the ruins of his previous plans" – so silver lining anyone?)
The Waleses put their new 'impact day' model into effect on November 3 when they travelled to Scarborough to launch funding for a youth mental health scheme.
But don't let the absolute lack of attention or media interest here detract from what a significant evolution of their MO this is.
The current royal model for outings has pretty much not changed much since Queen Mary was being fitted for her first corset. Turn up, shake hands, smile, (or in her case, not) and hope that the Royal Presence would bring with it donations and support. What ho, back to the palace for tea!
The biggest leap forward came in 1970 when Queen Elizabeth had the novel idea of actually going and talking to the masses and even shaking their hands, staging the first walkabout during a tour stop in Sydney.
Sure, the public was still kept securely behind rope lines or a fence or the occasional metal barricade but it was pretty revolutionary stuff. No longer was meeting royalty or at least seeing an HRH in person solely restricted to the nobility, those involved in the thoroughbred industry and people with triple barrelled surnames.
It was a stroke of marketing genius on the late Queen's part up there with the Nike swoosh, bringing a touch of modernity and woman-of-the-people to proceedings without any fear of diluting the magic of seeing the sovereign in person.
Suddenly the hoi polloi the length and breadth of 70s Britain could breathlessly rush home in time for Top of the Pops and some sort of tinned pineapple-topped culinary abomination and tell their family about seeing in real life Her Majesty. This was touching the hem, 20th century-style.
Since then, for more than 50 years, the walkabout has been the white sliced loaf of the royal diet, a ubiquitous fixture of every engagement, trip or tour. And, while pressing the flesh with the public remains a powerful and potent means of selling the institution to the masses, the world has quite obviously moved on.
A very expensive ornamental family who act as national figureheads is nice and all but what is imperative at this point is for working HRHs to change the view of the Palace from decorative to useful.
Which is what makes the Waleses' new model an equally shrewd one. It marries together the charm factor and dazzle of the walkabout with making their visits to rural centres come to stand for something other than cheery photo ops and the chance for Kate to show off her new-found collection of Busy Girl Blazers.
And that is a perfect segue to the second paradigm shift here, which is about the princess and her fashion.
Buckingham Palace used to dutifully regale the details of whatever hat/dress/co-ordinating umbrella combo Her Majesty had chosen, all of which she paired religiously (and I'm talking zeal-level here) with the same three-strand pearl necklace given to her by her father and a pair of diamond and pearl earrings given to her on her wedding day in 1947 by her grandmother Queen Mary.
That was a tradition that Kensington Palace followed with the Princess of Wales – however the mother-of-three has canned that custom.
According to the Express, Kensington Palace has begun "refusing" to give out the specifics of what the princess wears to public engagements because "so much media coverage is focused on what she wears."
The relationship between the princess and her style is a deeply complicated one.
In 2013, Booker Prize winner Hillary Mantel came under fire after delivering a lecture entitled Royal Bodies, calling her a "a jointed doll on which certain rags are hung" and "a shop-window mannequin, with no personality of her own, entirely defined by what she wore."
While much of what Mantel was saying was lost in the hullabaloo that followed ('how dare she' millions of royal tea towel collectors clucked), her point still rings true today: royal women especially are defined and read by their bodies and how they present themselves to the world.
And now? The Princess of Wales has had enough.
In the last year or so, there has been a clearly discernible change in her look, with smart blazers and trousers replacing her large collection of girly frocks around the time her working career really took off with the launch of her Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood.
Kate's official outings used to be all shaking hands and accepting posies; now we are seeing her convening round tables involving cabinet ministers and chairing meetings chock-o-block with academics.
The point is, the Princess of Wales clearly wants the story to be her work and not whatever mid-range navy top she picked up while down the King's Road.
Huh. Whoever would have thought it? After 11 years, three children, and that one time she played cricket in high heels (for the love of god, why woman?), Kate is letting her feminist fly. Hallelujah sister!
And you know what, in all this? I think the late Queen would heartily approve. She understood that the number-one job of the monarchy was to survive, and doing that requires considered, thoughtful transformation.
On Her Majesty, Mantel, who met the late sovereign on several occasions, wrote that "monarchy froze her and made her a thing, a thing which only had meaning when it was exposed, a thing that existed only to be looked at."
What William and Kate are doing right now is chucking that precept out the window. They don't want to "only be looked at," they want to matter for what they accomplish and change. Or to put it another way, out with the old, in with the do.
These crazy kids might just save the day yet.
Daniela Elser is a royal expert and freelance writer with 15 years’ experience who has written for some of Australia’s best print and digital media brands.
And dad Clarke Gayford may have delivered his best birthday cake yet.