Kate Middleton’s stroke of genius amid Meghan and Harry’s Netflix drama

By the end of a nearly six-hour endurance feat watched by Harry and Megan — after watching a stream of photos and videos of Meghan, Duchess of Sussex walking, hiking, playing with her children, making phone calls, hugging, dancing, gardening, petting dogs, watching TV, dining and flying in a private jet — it hit me.

Kate, Princess of Wales, may well be a genius.

Inside we’ve already seen two kitchens, two wardrobes, several bathrooms, Meghan and husband Prince Harry’s rented home on Vancouver Island, Kensington Palace’s Nottingham Cottage, Frogmore Windsor’s Cottage, Tyler Perry’s estate in Los Angeles, and their own Montecito mansion, including their son. Bedrooms of Archie and daughter Lilibet. We even managed to look inside Buckingham Palace.

Back to the genius status of Kate, Princess of Wales. I’m not saying this because she mastered the perfect bouncy blow-dry or because she managed to position herself to be the first commoner since Catherine Parr in 1533 to sit on the throne. Oh no.

The most cunning tactic that mostly goes unnoticed? A long game played by a princess that no one talks about?

Her silence.

Because what do we really know about Kate? This is not a trick question. Think about it, take away who she’s married to, the fact that she has three pretty kids, a mediocre education in art history, and the world’s largest collection of (I guess) useless clutch bags, what do we know about the woman inside? Are these Emilia Wickstead dresses?

We don’t know what books she reads, what TV she watches, or what her favorite color is. We do not know her hopes, fears, dreams; we don’t know if she likes to cook, who her best friend is, or what she does in her spare time. (Macrame blankets? Lost in Reddit crypto threads? Preying on willing with a paintball gun?)

We also do not know about her first date with husband Prince William, nor the smallest details of his proposal. We have never seen a video of her sobbing and know nothing about the emotional swings of her marriage to Prince William.

She is an enigma wrapped in mystery in a beautiful Zara top.

Despite the fact that she has been in the spotlight for more than a decade and despite the fact that she will become the next Queen of Britain, in fact, she is a blank slate. This Easter Island-worthy level of incomprehensibility is nothing short of extraordinary considering she has to be one of the most recognizable people on the planet.

And this, I would argue, is by design.

The fact that the Princess of Wales is even now terra incognita is a remarkable achievement at a time when fame usually translates into a certain expectation of serving herself, warts and all. (Are the rules of authenticity in order?).

The contrast between her and Meghan couldn’t be more like the Grand Canyon. It took Kate five years as a member of the royal family to give her first solo TV interview, and even then it was only for a Queen Elizabeth documentary where she didn’t reveal a shocking amount of anything about herself.

Kate has only ever done one magazine cover, a British one. Fashion for its 100th anniversary in 2016 – no real related interview.

Meghan has produced two magazine articles over the past four months, a six-part series and a podcast that was a hodgepodge of Gender Research 101, West Coast chatter and her own stories.

Of course, we could get to the “why” here; that the Duchess of Sussex is the standard-bearer of a culture that views the sharing of every emotional tantrum and thought as a moral imperative, while the Princess appears to embody something of an antique British personal constipation.

But instead, I think what is much more interesting is the question of the consequences, of where these two paths can lead.

Kate, in my opinion, realized that there is incredible power in silence, a lesson she may have learned from her late grandmother, who managed to live 70 years without ever giving a print interview, even when Heat the magazine asked politely.

Result? When Kate speaks, the world listens intently as she usually says something about her work at the Early Childhood Foundation, mental health, or her own children.

Of course, what comes out of her mouth is generally as exciting as a soaked vegan Scotch egg, but information about Kate is shared with such stinginess that the public and press avidly devour any glimpse of her as a person.

Someone somewhere inside Kensington Palace understands not only that a future queen needs a certain amount of mystique to reinforce the mythical quality of the monarchy, but that keeping Kate rare is also crucial.

Meghan and her husband Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex, have clearly decided to go in a diametrically opposite direction, choosing to make a living by exposing their soul to reg.

After watching all six episodes of their eponymous Netflix documentary, a feat that at times tested my emotional toughness and gag reflex, any sense of mystery was gone.

The Sussexes have revealed their lives, marriage and inner world to subscribers by posting their outpouring on Netflix, and the mystery is long, long gone.

Thus, danger may well lie for the duo.

What happens to their ability to make money when the excitement of the public at being granted entry into their private lives and their home has lost its novelty factor? When our curiosity is sated and we get sick of endless dizzying homemade videos of them running barefoot on the beach that look and feel like ads for erectile dysfunction drugs?

Right now that their documentary is finally out, the Sussexes are everywhere – on every news site, newspaper, magazine, tabloid, paper and two-bit blog. They are an inevitable force in the zeitgeist right now, a fact that is unlikely to change given that Harry’s memoir is coming out early in the new year.

Prepare for an advertising campaign, which may include, according to MirrorDuke boards a primetime TV special – yes, one more – to promote the shortly titled Spare.

The point is that there must be a tipping point, a moment when this kind of frantic global coverage will move from showing money that can’t be bought to the disturbing territory of omnipresence – an omnipresence that could threaten their ability to continue making gigantic business deals. .

You know what they say about familiarity and contempt.

So, we’ve been treated to one last moment captured on a smartphone from the planet Sussex? Only Netflix knows the answer.

Another episode of Kate’s approach? You can let your imagination run wild. And who else thinks that the princess can be a secret stall?

Daniela Elzer is a royal expert and freelance writer with 15 years of experience writing for some of Australia’s top print and digital media brands.