Kate Middleton 'Had To Learn' to Be Royal Too

Kate Middleton has opened up about her experiences joining the royal family as an outsider in a rare off-hand comment during a visit to a mental-health charity on Tuesday. The princess' comments link back to similar experiences shared by sister-in-law Meghan Markle.

Kate visited the Dame Kelly Holmes Trust in Bath, southwest England, on Tuesday, meeting with the Olympic runner from whom the youth development and sport charity takes its name. Kate joined the trust's leaders and some of the young people it helps, where she was asked whether she had always wanted to be a royal.

The princess said that she had never expected to be in the position she is today but that she "fell in love" with Prince William. Kate also opened up about some of the struggles she experienced and work she is still doing to fit into her role.

"They were just asking her about being a royal. Was it something that she wanted to do?" Holmes said after the engagement, per the U.K. newspaper Daily Mail. "And she said she had to learn. It's a struggle to know that you can be accepted and fit in and you are still learning every day."

As an example of something Kate is continuing to work on, despite being now 12 years an official working royal, Holmes revealed: "Doing public speaking isn't a natural thing for lots of people, is it? And she was saying she is still working that out but has to project. So, you know again, she humanized everything. Not everyone is perfect."

Kate's nervousness while preparing to speak publicly was picked up by fans when she made a speech on becoming the colonel of the Irish Guards in March.

The revelation about having to "learn" on the job and struggling to know if you can be accepted in the role as a working royal is a sentiment that was shared by Meghan Markle in her 2021 bombshell interview with Oprah Winfrey.

"There's no class on how to speak, how to cross your legs, how to be royal," Meghan told the TV host after stepping away from the monarchy with Prince Harry a year earlier. "There's none of that training. That might exist for other members of the family. That was not something that was offered to me."

The duchess elaborated on this in her 2022 Netflix docuseries. It charted the course of her relationship with Harry and the breakdown in relations between themselves, the royal family and wider institution of the monarchy.

"Joining this family, I knew that there was a protocol for how things were done," Meghan said.

"There's no class and some person who goes, 'Sit like this. Cross your legs like this. Use this fork. Don't do this. Curtsy then. Wear this kind of hat,'" she added. "It doesn't happen... So I needed to learn a lot. Including the national anthem... I Googled it."

Kate's comments, though, suggest that, for her also, her royal career has been a learning curve. Even the most polished of outward appearances bely an anxiety to succeed beneath.

Both Meghan and Kate share a number of similarities, not least their experiences as outsiders joining one of the most famous families in the world. This, however, did not bond the pair.

In his memoir, Spare, published in January, Prince Harry wrote that, despite his hopes, his wife and sister-in-law did not connect on any deep level. For their part, Kate and Meghan have said little about each other in public.

In her 2021 interview with Winfrey, Meghan spoke of her desire to set the record straight over stories that she had made Kate cry before the 2018 royal wedding. She said that it was the other way around. Meghan added that Kate was a "good person," and made plain to fans that: "If you love me, you don't have to hate her. And if you love her, you don't need to hate me."

When asked by Winfrey if she and Kate were ever as close as photographs of the sisters-in-law enjoying a day out at the Wimbledon tennis championships suggested, Meghan explained, considering the bigger picture, that: "My understanding and my experience of the past four years is, it's nothing like what it looks like."

James Crawford-Smith is Newsweek's royal reporter, based in London. You can find him on Twitter at @jrcrawfordsmith and read his stories on Newsweek's The Royals Facebook page.

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