Photo: Getty Images
Kate Middleton will one day take on the role of Queen Consort (wife of a reigning king) and she's been getting lessons from Queen Elizabeth. "Catherine has learned by observing," the Queen's biographer Sally Bedell Smith told People in a new cover story on Kate. "She knows what resonates. She will have absorbed a lot from this Queen." The magazine also points out that Kate displays the Queen's unofficial motto for life in the public eye: "Never complain, never explain."
However, it's unlikely that the Queen ever formally tutored Kate or gave her explicit lessons in royal life. It's likely that she approached her relationship with Kate the same way she does with prime ministers. "The Queen has always preferred to do rather than to say," historian Sarah Girstwood told the magazine. "With her audiences with her prime ministers, if there has been actual advice, it would be a discreet 'I think that went rather well' rather than actual instruction."
She continued, "It's a personal willingness to conform to the requirements of the institution. That sounds like an unappealing, unglamorous virtue, but it's an important one if you're going to be a successful cog in the royal wheel." Kate's inspiration from the Queen goes beyond lifestyle and into actual style. People also claims that Kate regularly wears jewels on loan from the monarch.
As the Queen starts her summer holiday at Balmoral Castle this week, Kate and her husband Prince William are hard at work on their royals duties. Bedell Smith adds the couple "are representing the Queen impeccably. They're showing a kind of dedication she would be proud of. And that probably gives her hope."