Princess Catherine makes major queen move

Daniela Elser

Just diamonds. About 2600 of them.

Sadly we have not just had a second coming or seen Princess Anne turn up to a state event wearing an outfit that looks like it was run up on a Singer out of surplus curtains material during Ted Heath’s administration but hey, we will take all the festive wonder we can get.

Kate, The Princess of Wales pulled off a serious power move at Wednesday’s German State Dinner by skipping her usual go-to tiara, which has been trotted out more than my most threadbare pun, and wearing one usually reserved for Queens. Just Queens.

Subtlety? In this economy?

Don’t be fooled and think this is a simple fashion story because sometimes as Freud would have said, a tiara is not just a tiara.

When it comes to State banquets Kate is normally dependably predictable, dutifully turning in something that gives maximum gown, to spend an evening making small talk with some junior Slovenian trade minister over their quail’s egg starters.

For Wednesday’s dinner for President Frank-Walter Steinmeier started, it seemed a dead cert that the princess would princess in the very same fashion as always.

Mais au contraire. When the Karte arrived at Windsor Castle she was wearing the enormous Oriental Circlet tiara, a piece that has not been seen in public in 20 years.

Not only is the Circlet far larger than Kate’s usual tiaras, most commonly wearing the Cambridge Lover’s Knot or Lotus Flower pieces, it is considered among the most important jewels from the 19th century in the Royal Collection.

And, it’s also only ever been worn by Queens, never by a mere princess before.

The Circlet’s history is a storeyed one. Originally designed for Queen Victoria in 1853 by her devoted other half Prince Albert, taking a break from introducing the monarchy to the concept of the flushing toilet, it was set with opals and 2,600 diamonds.

Then in 1901 her daughter-in-law Queen Alexandra, believing opals were unlucky, had them replaced with Burmese rubies, which is just the sort of things Queens used to do to fill their days, in between subjugating bits of the subcontinent and a spot of applique.

The tiara then disappeared again for decades, only to be dug out by the Queen Mother in 1936 who wore it on high rotation throughout her life.

Queen Elizabeth only ever wore it once during a tour to Malta in 2005.

And so for two decades, the Circlet was relegated to some dusty corner in the Palace, until now.

It’s all about the symbolism innit.

In the last three years, Kate (and Prince William) have gone from being a couple of generations removed from anything like a throne, just a jobbing duke and duchess to becoming the Prince and Princess of Wales to becoming a beleaguered monarchy’s Only And Great Hope For Survival.

With the institution badly damaged by the ongoing squalid, sordidness of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and to a far lesser degree, by Prince Harry and Meghan, The Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s claims of unconscious bias and reptilian approach, with the King having spent the majority of his reign so far battling cancer, what has become clear is that the whole royal box and dice now comes down to these two. To William and Kate.

That Kate was allowed to wear the Circlet reflects her meteoric rise up the royal ranks and marks an ostentatious and literal step on her way to becoming Queen herself.

(Who gets what pieces from the Royal Collection is not a decision made by a clueless dresser playing eenie, meenie, minie, moe but the distribution of jewellery is up to Queen Camilla.)

Really what the princess wearing the Circlet represents is the royal family saying the quiet part out loud.

If the monarchy is to survive after a disastrous six years that have seen the words ‘pedophile’, ‘sex trafficker’ and ‘racism’ used on high rotation in the same sentence as ‘Buckingham Palace’ then it will be William and Kate who will pull this off.

Unfortunately, King Charles’ reign is looking more like a bridging one, between his mother’s highly successful 70 years in the top job and his son briskly overhauling the whole three ring circus.

Without wanting to sound ghoulish it is impossible to deny the real politic here, that Kate wearing this Queenly tiara comes against the unassailable fact that King Charles is still battling cancer.

It was in January this year that the Princess of Wales revealed that her cancer was in remission – no such similar announcement has been issued by the Palace. Earlier this year the Telegraph reported that Charles “may die ‘with’ cancer, but not ‘of’ cancer”.

The other piece to consider here is the reportedly shifting power balance between the King and the Prince of Wales. Last year, The Royalist and the Daily Beast’s Tom began reporting that Charles’ cancer reveal had “fired the starting pistol on what courtiers euphemistically term the ‘change of reign.’”

“Executive power and influence [was] already flowing William’s way.”

Since then William has very clearly been setting out his own stall and laying out his vision for ruling, telling the Times he planned to take a “different” approach to monarchy and would be “royal with a smaller ‘r’”.

In October, he totally gave up on bushes to beat around when talking to actor Eugene Levy and said “change is on my agenda,” he said.

This month, Sykes reported that “Privately, few within the palace deny that the monarchy has entered its era of transition; indeed, many insiders’ days are now filled with little other than contemplating the inevitable question of what comes next.”

A friend of His Majesty told Sykes in October: “The change of reign is happening in real time, whether they admit it or not.”

Against the backdrop of all this, Kate donning the Circlet for the German State banquet makes perfect sense: Part reward for a job well done; part clear eyed, tacit acknowledgment of her and William trudging irrevocably towards their destiny.

Who needs gold, frankincense and myrrh when you can have all those lovely carats?

Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.