Breaking Protocol: William and Kate’s Snub to Camilla
The solemn coronation of Charles III will also be remembered for a blatant snub to Camilla, the Duchess of Wales: neither William nor Kate Middleton bowed to the queen as she left Westminster Abbey. In Kate’s case, the British press provided the following explanation: Middleton was “angry” because at the coronation she was only able to invite four members of her family, while the sovereign among children and grandchildren gathered in the Abbey as many as twenty Parker Bowles. But why did William also refuse to bow to Camilla? Did he perhaps want to show his support to his wife who had suffered an “injustice”? Partly, perhaps. But according to some royal observers, there is something else behind his behavior: “William did not bow to Camilla, perhaps unconsciously, out of respect for his mother Diana”.
Body Language Expert Judi James Weighs In
This is also believed by body language expert Judi James, who explained to the Mirror: “William could not have felt comfortable bowing to the woman who took his mother’s place on the throne of the United Kingdom”. And so, “following his instinct, he broke the protocol”: no reverence to the new queen. To whom, moreover, he did not even dedicate a word in the speech with which he inaugurated the concert at Windsor.
The Ghost of Diana Lives On
The ghost of Diana, it seems, continues to compete with Camilla in William’s heart. Maybe only unconsciously – it seems that the prince and his stepmother have managed to build a good relationship in recent years – but the latest facts are in plain sight. After all, Diana was a “fun, very informal mother, she really loved laughter and fun,” as the prince said in the documentary Diana, Our Mother: Her Life and Legacy. A mother who “smothered him with love” and, for this very reason, a cumbersome absence, an unfillable void. All the more so since as a teenager William had made a promise to his mother Diana that he did not have time to keep. When Charles and Lady divorced in 1996, the then Prince of Wales deprived his ex-wife of the title of Her Majesty. Those who referred to Diana were no longer required to call her Her Majesty and she was forced to bow to her children. A hard blow for Lady D, who was convinced that the title belonged to her as the mother of the future heir to the throne. And so the then fourteen-year-old William, as Paul Burrell recounts in the book A Royal Duty, “to calm the obvious anguish” of his mother, “shocked by the loss of the title of Her Majesty”, one evening put his arms around her neck and said: “Don’t worry, mom. One day, when I’m King, I’ll give it back to you. The year after, Diana would die at only 36 years old. And today on the throne of England sits the woman whom the princess, even in front of her children, used to call “rottweiler”.
