CULTURE

Queen Elizabeth Reportedly Once Disapproved of Kate Middleton’s Lack of a Full-Time Job

She was reportedly less than thrilled with Kate's lack of a full-time job.

Dec. 14, 2018

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With all the attention on Meghan Markle‘s so-called missteps/breaches in protocol/workaholism/feuds/general lack of propriety, it was only a matter of time before the British tabloids turned their attention back to Kate Middleton. According to a book by Vanity Fair royal correspondent Katie Nicholl, titled The Making of a Royal Romance and quoted in The Sun on Friday, Queen Elizabeth II reportedly had some reservations about Prince William’s college sweetheart, or so say some anonymous but purportedly royal-adjacent sources.

“Privately she had grave concerns and believed that Kate needed to have a job and an identity in her own right before an engagement was announced,” Nicholl wrote, per The Sun. “She is one of the hardest working royals, despite her age, and that a future member of the royal family was without a full-time job was unacceptable to her.” (Career-driven or not, it’s not like Kate was a total unknown to the royal family: She and William met in 2001, began dating in 2003, and weren’t engaged until 2010, so it’s not as though they rushed into things.)

An anonymous source quoted in the book had the most scathing take on the situation: “Swanning from one five-star holiday resort to another is not the prerequisite for a young woman possibly destined to be Queen.” It sounds like the exact opposite of one allegedly ongoing concern about Meghan—who apparently works too hard—so either Queen Elizabeth is the absolute hardest grandmother-in-law to please, or this is yet another example of the British tabloids simply churning up drama about the two sisters-in-law to feed the content machine.

The evidence seems to point toward the latter theory, since the book actually came out in 2011, and The Sun chose this week, following several reports of friction between Kate and Meghan, to dredge it back up. It certainly seems plausible that the tabloid dug up this excerpt in order to gin up those salacious rumors or, perhaps, to make the newest royal look better by comparison. Maybe there was some truth to the book’s content seven years ago, when the news was fresh; now it simply debunks the idea of any ill will between Meghan and the Queen—who, by the way, are adults and are allowed the occasional dispute—and also reads as irrelevant, since Kate and QE2, now related for the better part of a decade, seem to be on great terms.