After the death of Queen Elizabeth II in 2022, Kate Middleton—like her husband, Prince William—received a new title. After 11 years as the Duchess of Cambridge, Kate was bestowed the title Princess of Wales, which is reserved for the heir to the British throne or the heir’s spouse.
However, according to Robert Jobson, author of a new biography titled, Catherine, The Princess of Wales: A Biography of the Future Queen, the 42-year-old almost turned down the title. According to an excerpt published in the Daily Mail, Jobson writes that after Kate Middleton married William in 2011, she was apprehensive to use the title given how closely it was associated with her late mother-in-law, Princess Diana.
“In marrying the elder son of Prince Charles, Catherine was aware she’d one day have to tread in her late mother-in-law’s footsteps—but the prospect of becoming the Princess of Wales held little appeal,” Jobson writes. “She knew she’d inevitably be compared with Diana, whose untimely death had provoked such a tsunami of anger and grief. And she was right.”
Both in the tabloids and even in the royal household, Jobson notes, Kate was compared relentlessly to Diana. “Kate found all such talk stressful,” he writes. “Indeed, it got to the point where she felt she might follow Camilla (who opted to become Duchess of Cornwall) in refusing—when the time came—to be known as HRH Princess of Wales.” (Eight years after Princess Diana’s death in 1997, Prince Charles married Camilla Parker Bowles. Notably, Camilla declined to use the title Princess of Wales; instead, she went by the Duchess of Cornwall. She is now, of course, the Queen Consort, and goes by Queen Camilla.)
However, per Jobson, Kate Middleton accepted her new title when the time came out of respect for both her husband and his father, King Charles III. “Enough time had passed to make the title more palatable, and Catherine had been on the world stage long enough to be appreciated for her own qualities,” he says.
