Catherine is not the first Princess of Wales to come under overwhelming scrutiny.
The often tense relationship between her late mother-in-law, Princess Diana, and the media must surely have played a role in the Welsh’s cautious approach when it comes to details of home and family life.
Who could blame them?
However, it’s easy to forget that Diana’s dealings with the press were once overwhelmingly positive.
Lady Diana Spencer, as she then was, walking past television cameras waiting outside her Coleherne Court flat in November 1980.
In the early days of her courtship with Charles, journalists who stood outside her Kensington apartment waiting for a few words were surprised to discover how friendly Diana was.
Perhaps, looking back, we can detect the beginnings of future problems in that opening. At the time, however, it was refreshing to see a potential member of the Royal Family seem so approachable.
Such was the enthusiasm for Diana (and such was the paucity of other supposedly suitable partners for a future monarch who was then in his thirties and had played on the field) that important issues were ignored.
Little attention was paid to the story of her unhappy childhood, or to the personal insecurity that had continued to develop in her.
Years later, Diana confessed to me that, in all her years as Princess of Wales, she never got used to public adoration.
Looking delighted, Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer are photographed at Broadlands shortly after their engagement in March 1981.
Diana, Princess of Wales, braves wet and windy weather to meet the crowd waiting to see her outside Capital Radio in London, 1982.
But the truth is that he had courted the Hollywood style; advertising later discovered that she was unable to control it and was at risk of being consumed by it.
It’s a lesson his son William and Catherine will surely have learned.
We can see it in the determination to steer his own line through troubled waters. To address private problems on your own terms.
I applaud the Prince and Princess of Wales for trying to confront the social media sewer and maintain some dignity. Very good.
This, in the long term, is what we expect from royalty.
There can be no victory over trolls willing to say and do anything, seemingly at no cost to themselves.
The Welsh are determined to avoid becoming characters in other people’s fantasy, says Ingrid Seward
The Princess of Wales broadcasts to the nation in which she reveals a cancer diagnosis that ‘she had every right to keep private’
Kate meets the public during a tour after visiting Aberavon, South Wales, in February 2023.
Kate Middleton leaving her Chelsea home on her 25th birthday
William and Catherine have kept their heads. They have been the epitome of the expression “keep calm and carry on.”
If journalists and photographers are not friends of the Welsh, as they were of Diana (at least some), they are not enemies either.
Now that Catherine has revealed her cancer diagnosis in that emotional broadcast to the nation, she and her family appear to be finally enjoying some privacy.
As “deeply frustrated” as William may be by the recent furore, he has remained calm, at least in public. Catherine movingly acknowledged his support in her video.
The Prince of Wales has continued his work where possible, allowing his office to come up with ideas for his wife’s public return, where necessary.
Kate and William faced their difficulties in a friendly but distant manner and moved on.
That’s what they’ve always done. It’s how it should be.
- Ingrid Seward is the editor-in-chief of Majesty magazine. Her latest book is My Mother and I: The Inside Story of the King and Our Late Queen. Published by Simon and Schuster. £25