The Princess of Wales’s stunning — and brief — return to the spotlight this week has revealed a major shift.
Princess of Wales Kate Middleton is back in the spotlight amid her battle with cancer, looking very happy to be back at one of her favourite events.
Catherine, Princess of Wales, received a standing ovation as she arrived at Wimbledon. Photo: Andrei Isakovic/AFP
We have to go back to 2003 and the Kate jeans-wearing years to a time when she wasn’t a celebrity and her name wasn’t just a passing name. I doubt that in the 1,055 weeks or so since she and Prince William were first photographed together, not a week went by without her face appearing on the cover of a tabloid magazine standing by the register.
But in 2024, the Princess of Wales surpassed that number. In fact, I had a busy morning with my calculator and I can tell you that the three videos Kensington Palace has released of the princess this year have had more than 165.8 million views.
She reappears on Sunday in the men’s finals at Wimbledon, This is only the second time the princess has appeared in public this year.Instagram is a clear example of this, as the outing has sparked a wild response on social media. 41 million – that’s how many times videos of Kate at the tournament have been viewed by the official Instagram accounts for Wimbledon and Kensington Palace. Add to that the figures from X, formerly known as Twitter, and the total across the two platforms and accounts is just under 50 million views. Sure, these aren’t enough to force Kris Jen to brave the forces of her full forehead to raise a single eyebrow of approval, but what they do suggest is that Kate is going global in a way she hasn’t been before.
Kate’s appearance at Trooping the Colour has left royal fans around the world in awe. Photograph: Chris Jackson/Getty Images
Of course, in years past, the US and the world outside the UK and Commonwealth have been paying attention to royal weddings, babies, big moments, the sorts of events that would re-introduce the commemorative spoon industry. But does Kate go to a formal event while doing her day job? Does Kate go to an event she’s been to 11 times before and all she does is sit down and then hand out an embarrassing golden cup? Hardly. In normal times, that wouldn’t get 50 million views. The trump card here was Princess of Wales makes grand return in June for Trooping the ColourThis year, Kensington Palace’s video of the event has been viewed 50.8 million times. While their office didn’t release a video last year, the video of the last time the royals were on the Buckingham Palace balcony, for the King’s coronation, didn’t get half as many views, at 22.1 million.
Here comes the clarification part, because to understand these rising numbers, you have to step back and consider how dramatically and unexpectedly things have changed for Kate in just five years. In 2019, there were intermittent rumblings that all was not well between Wills and Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Wales. They had split their offices and private lives, and the Duke of Sussex had moved an hour away to Windsor, but overall Kate was still the slightly enigmatic cipher she had been for so long. Her public image was of a sweet, caring, kind girl who did some nice charity work and produced good children.
Kate, who has been battling cancer, has recently begun returning to public royal life. Photo: Shi Tang/Getty Images
And then, well, everything happened — Megxit’s departure, the pandemic, Oprah Winfrey, Spare, Netflix, Kate starting her own foundation and her work getting a lot more serious. And while the princess’s personal and private life went through various convulsions and transformations, the world was in the front row.
Kate had clearly been left behind as a front-row star on the biggest TV show in the world. After Meghan Markle’s split from her husband, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s eagerness to express their feelings – and the events that took place behind the palace gates – somehow brought Kate to life, made her a real person, and transformed her from a beautiful sphinx into the colorful person she never was before.
While this was happening, that dreaded virus that has forced us all into sleep, boredom and Uber Eats boxes was spreading across the globe, and the Wells stepped in. They invited the world into their Anmer Hall home and did things like Zoom calls for pensioners and joke with other parents about the joys of homeschooling. The world began to see an unplanned, unmediated, live princess, live on Zoom and from their living room. (Or at least the drawing room downstairs, the one with their second-best Robbins mugs.)
The artificial perfection has been replaced by realism, and thanks to the Sussexes’ revelations, they have become loaded with cultural resonance and weight they never had before. In 2021, her launch of the Royal Foundation Early Childhood Centre began to add real substance to her image and public standing, too. Then came 2024 with a bang. The first few months of the year were consumed entirely by Kate Jett madness, and the princess suddenly became the 21st century’s answer to Amelia Earhart. Adelaide’s cottage in Wales became a grassy hill on social media as much of the world underwent a kind of mass hallucinogenic experience worthy of study. Then, with the revelation that Kate had cancer, a moment that demanded more violent synonyms than the “shocking” it was being brought out, the princess took on a tragic – but brilliantly brave – heroic quality.
Kate’s public image has come a long way since the beginning of the year, when her absence from the limelight was widely covered by the media. Photograph: Henry Nicholls/AFP
Like her late mother-in-law Diana, Princess of Wales, she has gone from beloved in the UK and the Commonwealth, to beloved in the UK and the Commonwealth, to world-famous, to legendary. And I think that’s what brings us to the point where Kate’s videos have been viewed more than 223 million times in 2024 so far. (That’s across the official royal accounts and Wimbledon, and across X and Instagram and her cancer announcement, and her band outing and her tennis appearance. It’s worth noting that we haven’t even taken into account the numbers from TikTok, where Kate and the royal content is so prevalent, since none of the royal offices have accounts on the platform.) 223 million times. That’s not a figure of passing interest or mild curiosity, but
The Princess of Wales has become the subject of unprecedented global interest. 223 times. There is no doubt that the world is fascinated by Kate.
Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and royal commentator with over 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.
