As far as family portraits go, the latest one from the Middletons is a blinder. Wholesome nature backdrop? Check. Cute pet? Check. And – here’s the crucial bit – smiles that actually reach their eyes? A prevailing vibe that they might actually, whisper it, like each other? Check.
The group snap in question was released as part of a fresh drop of images (cooler people than me might call it a photo “dump”, but that doesn’t feel very regal) celebrating the Princess of Wales completing the Three Peaks challenge to raise money for the Royal Marsden Cancer Charity.
Kate, who announced last year that she is in remission from cancer after undergoing chemotherapy, hiked up Scafell Pike in the Lake District, Ben Nevis in Scotland, and Snowdon, or Yr Wyddfa, in Wales over the course of a weekend, and was joined by her family after climbing the latter. The pictures released at the weekend, days ahead of Harry and his family rumoured return to the UK, show her embracing and chatting with her husband, children George, Charlotte and Louis, parents Michael and Carole and younger brother James.
With their walking gear, jeans and vaguely countrified casualwear, big grins and general air of healthy windswept-ness, the Middleton clan looked both amiable and aspirational – exactly how the rest of the actual royals might want to portray themselves, were they not seemingly distracted by eternal squabbling.
Indeed, the timing of this set of photos only serves to amp up the contrast between the cheerful camaraderie of Camp Middleton and the ongoing psychodrama between Prince Harry and the rest of his family. Over the past few weeks, there has been interminable back and forth about whether the prodigal prince would bring his two children, Archie and Lilibet, to visit their grandfather during his latest visit to London.
The “will he, won’t he?” dilemma occupied endless headlines, but eventually, it was confirmed that Harry would not be accompanied by wife Meghan and the kids, after it emerged that the family would not receive police security over the course of the visit (security provisions for the Sussexes have been an ongoing source of contention in an already fractured relationship ever since Harry and Meghan stepped back from royal responsibilities).
A wholesome snap of Kate and her family following her Three Peaks challenge (X/@KensingtonRoyal)
Then everything got yet more fraught when Prince Harry’s team claimed that he had been offered to stay at Buckingham Palace – then was told that the offer had been “withdrawn”, a move they described as “disappointing”. According to the BBC, Buckingham Palace said that Harry had been invited to stay, but his team had not confirmed and then formally declined the offer on Saturday. The Palace said his team had later accepted, at which point it was too short notice to make the necessary arrangements.
This bureaucratic and very public way of dealing with family drama feels worlds away from the easy rapport that emanates from the Middleton picture of togetherness, which embodies the idea of a family showing up for one another through all the highs and lows.
James’s evocation of his bond with his older sister felt particularly moving. “I’m so incredibly proud of my darling sister,” he wrote in an emotional Instagram post that accompanied the picture and poignantly recalled the future plans they’d made together while she was undergoing treatment for her cancer diagnosis. “Two years ago, I told you we’d climb this mountain together,” he said. “We talked about climbing mountains while you were in hospital, and about the incredible healing power that nature can have for both the body and the mind.”
He went on to hail her “strength, resilience, and determination, all while being the most amazing mother, wife, daughter and sister”. His words seem to strike a good balance between avoiding that stiff upper lip that has caused the royals to be seen as a bit cold and standoffish in the past, without straying into the therapy-speak beloved by Harry and Meghan since they decamped to California.
In his 2024 memoir, James revealed that Kate, along with their other sister, Pippa, accompanied him to therapy sessions during his struggle with depression. “They’ve always been there during difficult times, and they were at my side during the hardest of times, as well,” he wrote.
In joining Kate for her walking challenge, this sense of familial reciprocity can’t help but feel like a stark contrast to the seething sibling enmity that seems to exist between William and Harry. Who can forget those bizarre allegations made in the latter’s memoir Spare, in which Harry claimed he and “Willy” had a heated altercation that resulted in a broken dog bowl (palace officials have, naturally, not commented)?
Kate embraces William in a photo shared on the couple’s Instagram account (X/@KensingtonRoyal)
James’s big display of support for his sister comes with a not-so-subtle subtext – that this is how you’re supposed to talk about your sibling in public. And in the grand scheme of things, family is what is really important.
Of course, none of this will be a coincidence, and the Middletons must surely be aware of the optics (and the fortuitous timing). Kate, especially, seems to have embraced a new approach to image-making, which we can perhaps trace back to last September. This was when the Prince and Princess of Wales released a short video which showed the royal couple and their three children strolling through forests, walking their dog, picnicking and playing cards. In a voiceover, Kate spoke candidly about how her cancer diagnosis earlier that year had impacted their family life and was a depature from the more staid and staged Windsor comms that we were used to.
It marked a “new era” for the Waleses, who since then seem to have doubled down on this PR approach – a bit more laidback, surrounded by nature, with an aesthetic that looks a bit like a Boden catalogue, with a dash more relatability.
It’s certainly a formula that’s working for them – and we should expect to see the Middleton gang cropping up in Kate’s PR dispatches going forward.
What feels particularly ironic is all the criticism and hyper-scrutiny that they faced as “commoners” in the run-up to the royal wedding 15 years ago, when now it’s their relative (albeit very upper middle class) normality that’s the best thing about them. William has talked about how their warmth helped him through some difficult times in the past, and Kate and her family are arguably the royals’ secret weapon.
I certainly know where I’d rather spend Christmas.