Emma Cowing: Kate reaps reward of a shift in Royal tactics

THE letter is nice enough. Informal, kind, caring in a polite, terribly British sort of a way. But it is the signature that really surprises. Round, loopy and oversized, it looks for all the world like it should have been written by Diana, Princess of Wales. Were it not, of course, that it reads “Catherine”.

The revelation this week that the Duchess of Cambridge had written a personal note to Fabian Bate, a nine-year-old leukaemia sufferer whom she met during a recent visit to the Royal Marsden Hospital, is an intriguing one. It is not, of course, so very odd that the Duchess should do such a thing. Royals, one imagines, must write letters the way the rest of us write e-mails, albeit with fewer “lols” and attached YouTube videos of ice-skating cats in tutus. But the letter does suggest something of a shift in tactics for the new member of the Royal Family who, apart from a state visit to Canada and the US several months ago, has remained surprisingly shadowy since her very public wedding back in April.

There are, it has been speculated, a number of reasons for this. Palace officials, mindful of the negative affect it had on Princess Diana, are keen to introduce Kate to the public slowly. Rather than burdening her with speaking engagements every week and endless rounds of hand-shaking, and understanding noddings of the head, there have been just a handful of discreet events. There have been reports of private visits to charities and organisations away from the cameras and the harsh judgments of press and public.

Then of course, there have been the recent discussions concerning the changing of the constitution, making it possible for any daughter the couple produce to become monarch. The Queen is said to be receptive to the notion, and the chances are that it will eventually happen, dragging this most ancient of institutions huffing and wheezing into the 21st century.

Boy or girl, however, it is likely that Kate will feel a huge amount of pressure to get pregnant soon. Who wouldn’t, when the future job of her yet unconceived child is the subject of international political debate? And who wouldn’t feel the pressure, when her own husband’s mother was pregnant within months of her wedding? The fact that Kate has not yet capitulated on this front shows resilience, and a determination to do things her own way.

Not everyone likes Kate. Visit some of the celebrity gossip blogs in the US, and you’ll see taunts about how she has done nothing for ten years except hang around waiting for William, as well as a lot of criticism that she doesn’t have a job. It is perhaps a testament to a culture that does not understand the monarchy, but it is also indicative of what modern young women expect of a female stateswoman.

In the US, Michelle Obama, the country’s first lady and as close as Americans will get to a queen-like figure, is a successful businesswoman who as first lady carries out a packed schedule of engagements that delicately straddle the line between politics and humanitarianism. She is inspirational not because of who she married, but because of who she is. Young women look up to her.

Kate, or Catherine, as we should probably learn to call her, has a long way to go before she can even think of slipping into Mrs Obama’s Manolo Blahniks. And it will probably always count against her that apart from a brief stint as a buyer at Jigsaw and taking a few snaps for her parents’ catalogue business, she has never had any career to speak of.

But perhaps the time has come to forget that. Like her or not, the Duchess of Cambridge is most likely going to be the future queen of this country, and her recent behaviour shows that she is taking tentative steps towards coming to terms with that role. If she can continue in this vein – being a young, kind and rather smiley face of this dusty old institution, she won’t be doing badly.

A life dedicated to charitable and humanitarian causes can be a life well lived. And if that is the sort of queen she eventually intends to be, she could probably do a whole lot worse.