8 months ago
45 ARTICLE AD
Let’s be real: the behavior of the Middletons added to the conspiracies and weirdness around the Princess of Wales for two months before Kate’s video announcement about her cancer. Even back when we were told that Kate had abdominal surgery and it was noncancerous, we didn’t see the Middletons visit Kate in the London Clinic, nor were there any sightings of William or Kate in Bucklebury. Even weirder was the fact that Carole’s Bucklebury HQ went radio silent – there were zero briefings about how of course Carole, Pippa and James were all rallying around Kate. Instead, Pippa went to St. Bart’s and paraded around in a different bikini every day for like two weeks. James Middleton went on a ski holiday and then announced his memoir around the same time Kate was being diagnosed with cancer and starting chemotherapy. Well, now that everyone is on the same page with Kate’s announcement, only now are we getting those “the Middletons are rallying around Will & Kate” stories. Where were these stories two months ago??
“Over the years, we have climbed many mountains together. As a family, we will climb this one with you too,” James Middleton wrote in the hours after his sister, the Princess of Wales, made the announcement about her diagnosis. It was an expression of quite how close the Middletons are. The family has banded together to support Kate as she undergoes a course of preventive chemotherapy after cancer was found following abdominal surgery.
The family live very close to each other, with Kate’s parents Carole and Michael Middleton in Bucklebury, a 40-minute drive from the Waleses in Windsor, while Pippa, her husband James Matthews and their three children live close by in Berkshire. It was to the Bucklebury manor house that Kate went after giving birth to George, now ten, in 2013 and her parents regularly have the children to stay.
Since Kate, 42, had surgery in January, the Middletons have been supporting her, William and their three children. Carole, who has always been a hands-on grandmother, has stepped up her help looking after George, Charlotte, eight, and Louis, five. This month some media outlets published a photograph of Carole and Kate taken near Windsor returning from the school run, with Carole driving.
Her siblings, James and Pippa, will also be offering emotional support. Pippa and Kate are so close that they shared a flat in Chelsea before she joined the royal family.
The Middleton family will be supporting William, too, as he tries to take the burden off his wife. Before he and Kate married, the Middleton family had long given William normality, a refuge from the pressures of being second in line to the throne, in a loving world imbued with middle England values. A happy family, with the marriage of Carole and Michael at its heart, it was a home that could provide the stability and warmth he craved after the death of his mother.
They welcomed William into their close-knit family. When Kate and William briefly broke up, Carole reportedly encouraged her daughter to resist showing him how hurt she was and to put on a brave face. After their wedding, William would see the Middletons more often than his own father and he even sometimes calls Michael “Dad”.
Even though invitations to the King’s coronation were strictly policed, William ensured that the whole Middleton clan was there. And the Middletons have been equally welcoming to James’s wife, who wore Carole’s dress from her 1980 wedding to Michael when she married James in September 2021.
Again, two months too late! One of my little side-theories is that one of the palace’s biggest lies was about the “planned” part of Kate’s January surgery. Whatever happened in that time frame, it was sudden and it caught everyone off-guard, even the Middletons. That would also explain why Kensington Palace was making all of these plans for Kate and William to travel and do a tour in Italy in December and early January – something happened suddenly. Now, I’ll also believe that Pippa and James’s separate vacations happened before they knew their sister has cancer. As for Carole… we haven’t seen the whole picture yet. We will in time.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.
Michael and Carole Middleton arriving at Westminster Abbey, central London, ahead of the coronation ceremony of King Charles III and Queen Camilla.,Image: 774175111, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: -, Model Release: no, Credit line: Andrew Milligan / Avalon
Pippa and James Middleton arriving at Westminster Abbey, central London, ahead of the coronation ceremony of King Charles III and Queen Camilla.,Image: 774175134, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: -, Model Release: no, Credit line: Andrew Milligan / Avalon
Carole Middleton arriving at Westminster Abbey, central London, ahead of the coronation ceremony of King Charles III and Queen Camilla.,Image: 774175184, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: -, Model Release: no, Credit line: Andrew Milligan / Avalon
Pippa Middleton leaves Westminster Abbey after the Coronation of King Charles III in London, United Kingdom, on 06 May 2023.,Image: 774201249, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: -, Model Release: no, Credit line: Unknown / Avalon
Carole Middleton, Michael Middleton, Pippa Middleton and James Middleton at the Coronation of King Charles III at Westminster Abbey in London, United Kingdom, on 06 May 2023.,Image: 774203418, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Credit line: James Veysey/Shutterstock / Avalon
Pippa Middleton and James Middleton at the Coronation of King Charles III at Westminster Abbey in London, United Kingdom, on 06 May 2023.,Image: 774203465, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: *** NO UK USE FOR 48 HRS ***, Model Release: no, Credit line: James Veysey/Shutterstock / Avalon
Pippa Middleton and James Middleton at the Coronation of King Charles III at Westminster Abbey in London, United Kingdom, on 06 May 2023.,Image: 774203484, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Credit line: James Veysey/Shutterstock / Avalon
Pippa Middleton at the Coronation of King Charles III at Westminster Abbey in London, United Kingdom, on 06 May 2023.,Image: 774228502, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: -, Model Release: no, Credit line: Dan Charity / Avalon
