Where is the Princess of Wales’s “Autumn” video? You know, the video from her Mother Nature/Four Seasons series, one of the dumbest “projects” to ever come out of Kensington Palace’s Keen Busywork Department. We didn’t get the “summer” video until pretty late in the season, which makes me believe that we’ll probably get the new video in mid-November, down to the wire! Anyway, just a reminder that we haven’t actually seen Prince William in two weeks and we haven’t seen Kate in more than two weeks. William will be in Rio next week, and I assume that means Kate will still be doing f–k all publicly. Because don’t you know, she’s in charge of the big move to Forest Lodge! They’re still struggling to put a bow on this latest “forever home” move, which is why Ingrid C-Word got sent out to wax rhapsodic about Kate’s love of being a simple country wife.
Kate Middleton and Prince William are signaling a different kind of life in their move to Windsor. As they prepare to settle into their new eight-bedroom home at Forest Lodge with their children, Prince George, 12, Princess Charlotte, 10, and Prince Louis, 7, it is clearly the leafy, country surroundings that they want for their family rather than city life. Forest Lodge is being called the family’s “forever home,” and they are set to live there even when William accedes to the throne.
There is a sense that the family’s three-year stay at Adelaide Cottage enabled them to test the waters and see if they could envisage living in the area for longer. That is certainly the case, palace insiders have told PEOPLE. Forest Lodge is a distinct upgrade from Adelaide and shows they are really putting down roots in the estate and parklands close to Windsor Castle.
“They like it around Windsor, and they’ve established themselves there,” Ingrid Seward, author of My Mother & I, says.
In a break from the practice of senior royals in the past, they don’t have live-in staff (it’s believed that the children’s nanny, Maria Turrion Borrallo, who has been with the family since George was a baby, and the housekeeper live at other smaller properties on the estate). They will also be paying the market rent for the property.
As well as renovations in the magnificent home, new trees have been planted and a security cordon has been created surrounding the house with about 150 acres.
Kate, 43, has stressed how important being out in nature has been for her recovery from cancer treatment – and the well-being it brings for young and old alike.
Seward believes that the royals have felt they were “prisoners” in Kensington Palace. The author, who is editor-in-chief of Majesty magazine, points to the fact that Kate used to like the walk the dogs in the park that bounded the palace. However, in practice, there was only the field where the helicopters landed behind the palace to do so, which is backed up to embassies.
“In London, there was a lack of the kind of life that Kate has decided she wants and needs. She wants a country life,” Seward says.
Now, as they look towards the end of the year, Princess Kate is planning her annual Christmas carol service at Westminster Abbey, where they will celebrate some of the people, causes and charities that they have encountered during the last 12 months. Before then, William heads off solo to Brazil for a week around his innovative environmental awards, the Earthshot Prize. There, he will be supported by celebrities Kylie Minogue and Shawn Mendes in a star-studded show.
“They seem to have their lives very well under control, more than organized,” Seward adds. “It feels to me that they’re they themselves are holding the reins of their life and not letting anyone else do it. But I feel that William and Kate really are holding their own reins which is great.”
“There was a lack of the kind of life that Kate has decided she wants and needs. She wants a country life…” I’m reminded of the Middleton PR around Pippa Middleton’s wedding back in 2017, when Carole basically sounded like a mother from a Jane Austen novel, treating her daughters as the “local beauties” of Bucklebury who simply wanted to be “married at home” and have simple, country lives. For Kate, it’s less about “being in the country” and more about living the kind of lifestyle she wants: that of a wealthy stay-at-home mother without a job. Little to no work, little to no expectations, just a vast, empty schedule which can be filled with tennis, school runs and drinking. Which would be fine if Kate, like Pippa, had just married some terribly moderately wealthy guy. But Kate is going to be queen consort! A work-from-home queen consort who does f–k all and lives grandly on her makeshift 150-acre estate.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.
