From one Duchess to another: Camilla and Kate share a moment - and similar outfits - together on Remembrance Sunday this year Of all the Royal Family’s hopes and expectations when Kate Middleton married Prince William, no one could have anticipated it would transform the former Mrs Camilla Parker Bowles.
Thanks to Kate, the Duchess of Cornwall’s stock has never been higher within the palace walls, especially with the Queen — who once looked upon Prince Charles’s former mistress as a potential threat to the stability of the monarchy.
Her resoundingly successful visit to the set of Strictly Come Dancing at the weekend — where she chatted animatedly to Sir Bruce Forsyth, joked with contestants and cast her glowing verdict on a rehearsal of the quick-step — was that of a woman at ease with herself who is enjoying new-found royal favour.
The reason for this heartening approval is that Camilla, 64, has taken the Duchess of Cambridge firmly under her wing. Camilla has claimed the crucial role of making sure Kate that feels ‘at home’ as a royal.
It was always clear that Kate would need help to see her through the difficult early years of life in the royal goldfish bowl — something no one gave Princess Diana, with tragic results.
William couldn’t really help very much. Indeed, he is viewed as lamentably inadequate in this area. ‘He’s not always the easiest of people, entirely understandably, given how old he was when Diana died,’ says a close family friend.
‘At the best of times, the royal men just don’t have much sensitivity when it comes to helping ease new members into the royal life. They’re not unkind — they just don’t think.’
Enter the Duchess of Cornwall, a woman who has lived more than a little. She is ‘in regular touch’ with Kate and has become her sounding board on practically everything: from how to deal with other, more prickly members of the family such as Princess Anne, to coping with photo-graphers. She told Kate that one trick is to focus on the faces of one or two cameramen she recognises in order to help her look more relaxed.
The Royal men, including Prince William and Prince Charles, don't have much sensitivity when it comes to easing new members into royal life, according to a close family friend
Advice: Camilla has also been offering matronly guidance to Princess Beatrice, left, and Princess Eugenie, right, the daughters of the Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York, centre Quietly, Camilla is creating a senior role for herself by also proffering matronly advice to Prince Andrew’s daughters Beatrice and Eugenie. ‘Believe me, we hope the lesson of Diana has been well and truly learned,’ says the friend.
Camilla, of course, had a private, ringside view of the totally avoidable tragedy of Diana’s unhappiness.
So for Diana’s friends, at least, it is a bitter irony that the fabled ‘third person’ in the Princess’s marriage should apparently be setting out to make herself indispensable to the popular young woman who would have been Diana’s daughter-in-law.
They see it — unfairly, perhaps — as the strategic move to take control of an older and more experienced woman from a family that has been close to the royals for generations.
But Camilla’s expanding sphere of influence is something that seems to have started to take shape before William and Kate’s marriage in April.
Many believe that her influence was stamped on the guest list, which excluded long- standing friends of Diana who had known William since he was a child, such as Rosa Monckton and Lady Annabel Goldsmith.Several weeks before the ceremony, Camilla and her daughter, Laura, enjoyed a girlie lunch with Kate and her sister Pippa at Koffman’s, the Berkeley hotel restaurant in London’s Knightsbridge.
One word in particular reached the ears of fellow diners during their animated conversation — ‘advice’.
On the day of the wedding, Camilla arranged for Kate to have her nails done by her own favourite manicurist, Marina Sandoval, from the Jo Hansford hair salon in Mayfair. She also gave Kate a highly personal wedding gift — a gold charm-style bracelet with a small disc engraved with hers and Catherine’s cyphers.
Each is a large ‘C’ under a coronet, though Camilla’s is surrounded by a circle. What makes the gift so significant? Camilla has a similar bracelet of her own that she rarely takes off.
‘Camilla’s exceptional warmth has really touched Catherine,’ says one of Kate’s friends.
At the weekend it also emerged that Camilla has introduced Kate to beauty therapist Deborah Mitchell, who specialises in a £165-a-time bee sting facial — hailed as the ‘non-surgical facelift’ and an organic alternative to Botox.
Former beauty queen Deborah is said to have been treating the Duchess of Cornwall for six years and to have been giving Kate tips on her complexion since the wedding.
In other ways, too, there is a growing closeness between the two women.
On Remembrance Sunday earlier this month, Camilla was chatting and exchanging warm smiles with Kate on the Foreign Office balcony overlooking the Cenotaph. Lip-readers claimed the 29-year-old Duchess of Cambridge wondered out loud ‘if William will be nervous’.
The other area about which she has been talking to Camilla is which charities to support.
One idea is for Kate to help a specific charity intensively for a limited time of one or two years during special appeals. This could be more beneficial than if she spread herself thinly over dozens of good causes. Obviously, she is in high demand.
These charities include those helping young people and military veterans as well as those in areas such as conservation and art therapy.
But perhaps Camilla’s greatest help so far in smoothing Kate’s path as a fledgling royal is the change she has brought about in Prince Charles.
Though he adores Kate, he is the one figure who has found it difficult to adjust to her arrival in the Royal Family, mainly because of all the uncomfortable memories thrown up by constant comparisons between her and Diana.
Camilla, pictured right next to the Queen and Carole Middleton, played a vital role in supporting Kate during the Royal Wedding earlier this year‘At one stage he was almost tearing his hair out at the endless references to Diana and what she was like, because it always led to talk of his own shortcomings,’ says an aide. ‘It went on for months, and he has only recently calmed down.’
It was Camilla who soothed him, in the same reassuring way that she has been handling Charles’s glooms and fretfulness for 30 years. But now comes a new challenge.
After the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee next year, the Prince of Wales will have to put up with Kate becoming chatelaine of Kensington Palace, the place everyone associates with Diana and her unhappy marriage — and with the powerful memory of the lake of flowers created by a mourning public after her death.
Earlier this month, it was announced that William and Kate would be moving into the late Princess Margaret’s old apartment there in 2013. Prince Harry is also due to move there, taking over the cottage that William and Kate currently use as their London base.
But with a bitter irony that dismays Diana’s ever-loyal friends, Camilla is likely to be the key influence on young housewife Kate. Setting up home in this vast apartment of 21 rooms on four floors will need the guidance and advice of a woman with experience of that very different life as a royal.
First home: Kate and William will move into Kensington Palace, west London, where she will be waited on by a string of servants Kate’s biggest challenge will be giving up her idyllic days of normal married life at their farmhouse in Anglesey, where William is based as an RAF air-sea rescue helicopter pilot. (In February, after Kate’s 30th birthday, he leaves for the Falklands on a six-week posting).
Camilla has already warned Kate that at Kensington Palace she and William will require a minimum staff of a butler, a housekeeper, a ladies’ dresser, a valet, a cook, chauffeur and several other workers.
Unlike Diana, an Earl’s daughter who had grown up with servants, Kate is still uncomfortable having staff pirouetting around her. But she knows that, on moving into Kensington Palace, she will have to accept the inevitable.
Camilla has also advised her that a personal dresser is vital if she is to perform the royal role the public expect of her.
As for choosing the staff, the Duchess of Cornwall — mature, knowledgeable, reassuring, and the chatelaine these past six years of Clarence House, Highgrove and Birkhall — will be there to help.
If ever the former Mrs Camilla Parker Bowles dreamed of playing a crucial role at the centre of the Royal Family, this is it.
source:dailymail
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