Ah, it’s August, the month when the royal family flocks north to Balmoral to recuperate from a busy year of opening digger factories and dermatitis wards to spend a few weeks barbequing lochside and coating One’s ankles in Aeroguard.
If you’re looking for him, you will be able to find King Charles doing some Robert Burnsian communing with the glens and enjoying one of his greatest pleasures: It’s kilt o’clock!
The King might hate leaky pens, the Tate Modern, and phone calls with a California area code, but he clearly loves the chance to get into traditional Scottish dress, och aye.
Give His Majesty the slightest opportunity and he will joyfully slip into some tartan, always keen to get a bit of breeze up his nether regions and to show off his shapely calves. Only this week he was happily posting on Instagram wearing a holiday favourite.
But Prince William? Nayyy lassie (or lad).
The Prince of Wales has been undertaking royal engagements for 26 years as an adult but has never once worn a kilt. Ever. A velvet cap, feathers, capes, a towering bearskin hat, kilos of gold braid, top hats, sashes, big gold broaches, bejewelled gold chains, even bigger embroidered silver stars, and metres of drapey green velvet: William’s royal career has seen him wear any number of, frankly, ridiculous bits of fancy frippery that are part of being an on-the-clock HRH. But. Never. Once. A Kilt.
Which is super-duper awkward, as he is the Lord of the Isles, and Prince and Great Steward of Scotland, and will one day be King of Scotland.
And his ongoing aversion to this particular symbol of national identity is increasingly embarrassing for a Crown Inc, given that Great Britain is a 319 year-old union that was largely violently forced on the Scots who are still dead touchy about it all. (The 2014 referendum to secede failed but it was touch and go there.)
The royal family have always gone to great lengths to keep the Scots sweet, starting with Queen Victoria who dropped £32,000 to buy Balmoral (also the Bavaria-like forests were meant to cheer up a homesick Prince Albert).
Ever since then, the royal family has spent stretches of the year at the 50,000 acre estate enjoying lots of outdoorsy, clean living activities like fly fishing for salmon and stalking deer, a violent coda for Bambi’s Scottish mother.
The bonds with the Highlands went further than the political, and it was genuine affection on Queen Elizabeth’s part who could reliably be seen having her annual public giggle at the Highland Games while done up like a Disneyworld extra.
Charles, when he was a prince, did the same, slipping into one of his many kilts (he wears Hunting Stewart, Balmoral, Duke of Rothesay, Duke of Rothesay Hunting and Lord of the Isles Hunting tartans) to do everything from visiting an art gallery, a naval facility, planting a tree, going to church, opening a children’s playground, to announce his engagement to Queen Camilla, and to even go to the beach.
Charles, like his mother and father, has always very willingly buttered up, and continues to lavishly butter up, the Scots. However William has refused. The last time that he was photographed wearing a kilt was in 1990, aged eight and in that rare sighting the wee chap looked like iron-fisted Nanny must have forcibly zipped him into it.
The man clearly does not want to wear one, no matter the political repercussions.
It would be very tempting to spend the next 500 words doing DIY Jung-ing to decode William’s obstinate refusal (pathological knee shyness?) but I’ll nobly refrain and focus on the bigger picture.
His obstinate refusal to put on traditional dress is not only kinda weird but, bigger picture, speaks volumes about William’s approach to much of royal life these days, which comes down to: Yeah-nah. He will do the bits of royalling he fancies and boo sucks to the rest of it.
He clearly does not want to wear a kilt, so does not. Nor does he, now, attend the Chelsea Flower Show, log hundreds of meat and potatoes working engagements of opening new diesel pumping plants or do the sorts of extended overseas tours that the Foreign Office must be champing at the bit for he and Kate, The Princess of Wales to get on with.
The couple has not undertaken a joint international tour since March 2022, when their Caribbean visit skittered off course and became all about race, power, the ghosts of slavery and republicanism. Even footage of Kate eating a raw conch didn’t manage to get people to look away from the car crash.
Obviously the princess’ cancer diagnosis, chemotherapy and recovery has played a part in this long gap between tours, but we are now past the point where any conclusion can be drawn but the obvious one: That the prince and princess don’t want to leave their kids at home with a freezer full of ready meals while they try to boost English cheddar sales in what the Palace probably still horribly calls ‘The Orient’.
William’s refusal to wear a kilt exemplifies his ‘don’t wanna, so won’t’ attitude and approach.
So, the final score, it’s a bad time for cheese exports and kilt sales but August is a sensational month, as has actually happened, if you fancy bumping into a solo Charles rambling along a rocky mountain path and making small talk with the high-on-clean-air King.
Daniela Elser is an editor and commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with Australia’s leading media titles.
Read related topics:Queen Elizabeth II