Kate Middleton’s Cancer Recovery Video Is ‘Reset to End All Resets’: Source

As the positive news of Kate Middleton’s completion of chemotherapy and cancer-free status sank in Monday, questions about her ongoing recovery were replaced by one big question about the video she used to announce the news: namely, WTF was that?

There was of course, no precedent, as in times gone by the only updates about royal health were delivered either on an easel in the courtyard of Buckingham Palace (“…delivered of a boy…”) or via the rather curt announcement on the BBC, “The king is dead, God save the king.”

So it’s fair to say there has never been a more massive and abrupt shift in the tone of royal messaging than the one signaled by Kate’s astonishingly intimate Instagram cancer recovery video, directed by Will Warr.

“Doing what I can to stay cancer free is now my focus,” Kate said. “My path to healing and full recovery is long and I must continue to take each day as it comes.”

The words were powerful enough; but they were accompanied by artsy, atmospheric images of very private family life—with Kate, husband Prince William and their children playing and hugging and hanging out in the countryside and beach, and Kate and William themselves being more affectionate with each other than the public has ever seen before.

If the medium really is the message, then the message here was unequivocal; forget everything you think you know about the monarchy, this is what the royal family is going to look like from now on.

The reign of King William and Queen Kate, we were put on notice Monday, will be shiny, professional and digital first, with a heavy focus on artfully configured cornfields, butterflies, positivity, flattering light, sunsets, picnics in the forest, card games and snogging Prince William on the beach.

One friend of William and Kate told The Daily Beast: “It’s the reset to end all resets. This is Kate and William as they mean to go on. It’s family first and f**k the haters, f**k the press, f**k Harry and Meghan.

“It helps that they actually are like this. If you go to a kid’s birthday party at their house, they will be the ones organizing games for all the kids whereas the rest of us would happily get an entertainer in and be drinking wine in the kitchen.”

The great lesson that Kate learnt from the late Queen Elizabeth II—and has applied much more diligently than any of her children or grandchildren ever have—is the importance of mystique.

Kate has never given a personal interview. We don’t know her favorite foods or what her preferred colors are. Like the queen, she has guarded her privacy by simply never talking about herself, her feelings, her opinions or her emotions.

In the deeply personal video released Monday, Kate broke with the habit of a lifetime and let us in. She told us about the deep stuff of her life—her hopes and fears for herself and her family—for the first time ever.

This video was a declaration of war on the stiff upper lip, a forceful rebuttal to those who accuse her of being some kind of automaton, a blank screen or “a jointed doll on which certain rags are hung” in the stinging words of the late Hilary Mantel.

Simon Bruty/Anychance/Getty Images

The rejection of the strictures of royalty also meant there was no room in the video for an embrace with King Charles or Queen Camilla, despite the relentless messaging from the king’s office over the past nine months about how close he and Kate have become in their shared cancer journeys.

Instead, we were treated to family time at the Middleton household, with the oh-so-normal Waleses hanging with Kate’s parents, Michael and Carole.

Among the billions of people watching what could in another world be a two-minute ad for a dating site, there can be little doubt that among them was one particular resident of Montecito, California.

And Meghan Markle might be forgiven for wondering what the world (and specifically the British media) would have said if it was she and Harry who had released a video vignette of such tooth-aching saccharinity.

And she might also have been wondering how the hell this uptight Limey, who couldn’t even lend her a dab of lip gloss without rolling her eyes a few years ago, had managed to so comprehensively steal her clothes.