The People's Princesses: A Comparison

     The parallel had been drawn before again and again, and would be drawn dozens of times over before the day was out.  As the bells gonged and all "honored guests" took their seats in the ancient abbey, thousands outside the church doors shuffled and pressed in close to each other in hopes of getting a glimpse of Kate Middleton stepping out of the limousine.  The second "People's Princess" was getting married.  For many, the wedding of an heir to the British throne was something they had already seen once before; to draw comparisons between the two events and their stars was only natural.  But even though Princess Diana and Kate Middleton may share their fashion icon statuses, their royal husbands, and even their engagement ring, their similarities really do pale in comparison to the differences in their backgrounds as well as their relationships with family and the media.

Diana and baby Harry

      Even though Diana Spencer was a part of the aristocratic Spencer family, she lived in a broken home.  Her mother maintained an extramarital affair for two years until the divorce from her father in 1969, when Diana was eight years old.  Both of her parents eventually remarried, and Diana found herself in a state of flux, alternating between homes.  She wasn't able to succeed in school, and ended up failing two Ordinary Level GCE exams, eventually dropping from two different institutions.  By the time Diana was nineteen, Prince Charles, pressured into marrying someone other than his lover, Camilla Parker Bowles, began to woo the young Diana, sister of his ex-girlfriend.  Six months later, their engagement was announced.  When asked if they were "marrying for love," Diana replied that yes, of course they were; Charles, meanwhile, quipped under his breath "whatever love means."

Miss Kate

     Catherine (now formerly) Middleton is the daughter of two working-class parents, coming from a line of coal miners and builders (hardly aristocratic.)  In 1987 her mother, Carole, started the shared family business, Party Pieces; and over time both parents were able to build the business up and send the children to exclusive schools after Kate experienced a great deal of bullying elsewhere.  Unlike Diana, Kate did attend university, where she met and befriended Prince William, Diana and Charles' eldest son.  Because she was already in a relationship at the time, they remained platonic until two years later in 2003, when they and a group of friends rented an apartment together.  Despite a very brief break-up in 2007, William finally proposed to Kate after having known her for nearly a decade.

     Both ladies were thrust into the target range of the paparazzi rather suddenly at around the same time in their lives.  But, unlike Diana, Kate had the luxury of maturing and becoming acclimated to the public life for practically nine years before jumping off the cliff of marrying into the royal family.  And unlike Prince Charles, William has, since his mother's fatal car accident, always been very wary of the press.  There seems to be, as the media has speculated over and over again, a very concerted effort on his part to be that defensive barrier between the media and those that he loves, whether it's patting Kate on the knee assuringly after a very long interview, or tugging baby George's blanket a little further up his neck when meeting the press for the first time.  Every interaction is on his terms.

Kate (or Catharine), George, and William: the Cambridge Family

     Between the two "People's Princesses," the stark contrast of their publicly-known histories seem to point towards a much more stable public and private life for the daughter-in-law, and hopefully, a better future for the upcoming generation in that crazy tornado of royalty. "Family means no one gets left behind or forgotten."  And though, no doubt, there are certainly private politics in the royal family that the public can never know about (we'll never see the full story), one can't ignore the tremendous benefits that a loving, supportive network can bring to anyone, princess or not.