William & Kate’s New Approach

[Thunderbird7]

I was listening to a podcast recently which outlined the differences between William and Kate’s approach vs the traditional approach to being working members of the royal family.

William and Kate are trying to do bigger, more involved projects like Shaping Us and Earthshot. While I think they are both great projects William and Kate are VERY involved, maybe too involved. Obviously the traditional royal approach is getting out there and maybe making less of a personal impact but being seen by as many people as possible, being generalists, and patronising change makers rather than making change themselves.

I have to admit I kind of prefer the old style of monarchy more. I think the point of monarchy is to be seen, not in a superficial way, but in a way that enables subjects to be & do their best.

Plus William and Kate are more involved in their kids’ lives than traditionally royals are which I don’t begrudge them for, I think it’s great, but it does mean they have less time & the two things are compounding each other to make them less visible?

What are your thoughts on the 2 styles? What do you prefer?

I’ll also add a poll, why not.

(I am generally interested in the question so please don’t make jibes about anyone being workshy or bring up Harry, Meghan and Andrew… there are other threads!)

Maybe they're trying to phase out ... from a strategic perspective they need to be out there and be seen to survive. The older generation realised this, I'm assuming they must too but aren't bothered

I am not in favour of the RF, but if we have to have one I think they should be out and about amongst the people who are funding them.

These 'big projects' will be lackeys doing all the grunt work and the Royals doing an occasional photo call. William and Catherine have always been lazy, even in comparison to other Royals, let alone the average working person in the UK - this is just an excuse for them to do even less.

I think they are scrambling to stay relevant while priorising their own self-interests. They don't make the sacrifices that other royals have made in the past, so it makes their efforts look quite mediocre in my opinion. It's great for their family and their own mental health, I'm sure, but they are royals! They are supposed to be diligent, hard workers.

Feel a bit of a hypocrite joining this discussion as I’m a republican…

I’ve always thought Kate missed a trick with the focus on early years. It’s too big a topic and, crucially, it’s too political. Austerity has decimated so many important structures for early years (surestart centres, the growing waiting lists for CAMHS or SEN assessment/provision) - it can’t be tackled without highlighting that the government needs to do more. Can you imagine Kate getting up and giving a speech decrying the record raise in child homelessness and actually criticising those responsible? The image of the monarchy (although after reading ‘And What Do You Do’ and stories like the Queen lobbying parliament to ensure exception from transparency laws etc I’m sceptical of how true this is in reality) is to be separate from politics. You also have the tricky problem of the optics of somebody who wears hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of designer clothes each year and has at least three houses talking about poverty.

What I think she should have done is embraced what she’s clearly interested in and done something to do with encouraging young people into sports (could even focus it specifically on girls) - something along the lines of Michelle Obama’s campaign when she was First Lady. Or along the lines of a scheme where you get recognition for participating in a certain number of activities/hours of physical activity performed backed up by campaigning to get more sports related resources into schools (we’re told she negotiates with companies to make early years donations so no reason why she couldn’t do similar with sporting equipment). Set up links between local sports teams and schools or private public schools with great sports set ups and local schools without. Front campaigns for the NHS about childhood exercise. It would have the bonus that when she’s using sports events in her engagement figures that she could incorporate some sort of action into it - maybe participating in a scheme allows children entry into a draw for Wimbledon (or whatever) tickets and she could do a meet and great with them.

Ultimately I’m never going to agree with the concept of a hereditary monarchy in 2024. I don’t believe that anyone is suited to rule via accident of birth. But I do think that if we’ve got to have them (and I can’t see a republic in my lifetime) then they need to give something back to the country beyond looking pretty and shaking hands on a superficial 5 minute visit.

I agree completely.

I think the idea of focussing more on specific issues rather than ribbon cutting isn't a bad one but I don't think they have done it successfully.

The early years stuff in particular is incredibly vague and seems to be really an excuse to have Kate photographed with young children a lot. If you look at their foundation website, the achievements page is basically a list of times William and Kate have made speeches.

Charles and Philip did much better with the Prince's trust and the DoE awards because it's much clearer what these are for and what impact they have.

I think one of the problems William and Kate have is the way middle class people use nannies these days. A Nanny is now “childcare so both parents can work” whereas they are trying to hold on to the traditional upper class approach of “a Nanny is someone who you employ when you have a child to do a lot of the child rearing”.

So the palace’s argument that Kate isn’t available to work full time as she’s got 3 kids (reasonable on the face of it) falls down as they’ve got 2 nannies and all the kids are at school. If Kate’s there for before and after school, what does the two nannies do? If the nannies are doing the school run and before/after school care, why can’t she and William work? That both William and Kate are ruled out of engagements for the whole of all the school holidays seems excessive to families juggling 2 careers.

Since when do they have two nannies?

Like I said, I’m genuinely interested in the topic & not the pile ons that often happen on RF threads. If you don’t like a word I used then imagine I used a different one, and if you can’t do that start a new thread to discuss word usage. Let’s keep on topic.

Agree with this… early years is important but the project needs to actually deliver something (I don’t know what - mum & baby groups? Classes?) as highlighting an issue is not enough on its own.

I think one thing is compounding the other: the focus on their young family, fine, I don’t begrudge them that, but on top of that the focus on quite narrow but large projects makes them much less visible than they need to be.

I agree.
I know many young people who have benefited from the Princes Trust including my godson.
Not sure about what W and K have actually achieved tbh.

@FancyBiscuitsLevel - yeah I think the fact that they seem to work very part time during term time and then not at all during the holidays does feel excessive to those of us who juggle two careers without a nanny

Totally agree
I have always thought that Kate should have gone down the sports / exercise / health route . She has an interest in this area and would be a good ambassador
Michelle Obama and her desire to get people moving was a great success
I think that Kate would come into her own if she championed something that she has interest/ knowledge .

It's interesting how we all have different views and shows how hard it is for them to strike the right balance.

I think it's great they are involved in some seriously important topics which may take a very long time to show results. Politicians worried about the next election don't do that because they need quicker results.

IMHO, if they were more visible rocking up to places, shaking hands and cutting ribbons, they'd get more flak for not actually doing anything.

It’s intrinsically part of the conversation OP…

If some refer to the wider populace as ‘subjects’ it continues to enable a family to behave in a way that wouldn’t be tolerated if they had not gained ‘status’ through birth. I think W&K are workshy (as highlighted by the PP) and their visibility, choices of work and patronages are an indication of that.

@MaggieFS there's a middle ground though where they do more in person but on particular topics, like Charles did with the Prince's trust

How do you jump to that conclusion? I can’t imagine anyone I know feeling like that whether they are in favour of the monarchy or not. Even my relative who is in the armed forces does not feel that way (I asked 😆). Anyway, as the op said, it was just their choice of words and not what the discussion is meant to be about

I used it in the constitutional sense - if you live in the UK you are KC’s subject. You may disagree on whether that should be the case, this thread is not about that though. We do have a monarchy so unless you want them to sit around being fed grapes until a republican utopia arrives, the question is whose approach is best for actually doing the job.

Get rid of the lot of them I say! Subjects indeed 🙄

Princes Trust is great, I know people who they helped. That’s the sort of thing W&K should be doing. It also didn’t suck up all of Charles’s energy so he had time for other things too. He seems to be a better delegator. I think Earthshot is great but William is too involved.

(It should also have been handed over to William, Charles shouldn’t still be doing that as King, but that’s a whole other topic and I’d be a hypocrite 😆)

I feel I’ve answered this but for clarity, I chose a 3rd option… a Republic where their visibility is irrelevant.

A ‘ruling’ family by dint of birth is ridiculous, archaic and enables huge imbalances in power and accessibility to change. If they really want to do right by their ‘subjects’, abdicate.

Princess Anne is a superstar. She never stops, yet is still able to live her life, have fun, and raised happy, well-balanced children (that we know of). I'd be so ashamed of myself if my non-heir-to-the-throne aunt worked harder than me - the actual heir to the throne.

And if that doesn’t happen, what would you want them to do with their time?

Subjects??? Fuck this

Stop taking public money and get a job. It’s been and is being done by other royal families.