2024-04-04 15:35:14
By Pablo SAN ROMÁN
Princess Catherine of Wales is one of the most popular and beloved people in the British monarchy, now confronted with cancer that she herself announced this Friday, trying to preserve some of her charismatic smile despite the circumstances.
The announcement comes two months after her father, King Charles III, himself stated that he also suffers from cancer and Catherine herself underwent a mysterious abdominal operation that, followed by a long absence from the media, unleashed everything. . kind of speculation.
The rumors skyrocketed about ten days ago, when the palace released a retouched photograph of the princess with her three children on the occasion of Mother’s Day.
This Friday, the wife of the heir to the British throne finally officially reappeared, visibly tired, in a video in which she announced the illness without any details other than having started chemotherapy treatment.
The commoner Kate Middleton entered the royal family when she married Prince William, heir to the crown, in 2011, at Westminster Abbey, in a ceremony watched by tens of millions of television viewers around the world.
Catherine quickly adapted to the limitations of reality, unlike her late mother-in-law, Princess Diana, or her sister-in-law, the American actress Meghan Markle.
And she has always kept a low profile, never responding to rumors about her husband’s alleged adulteries, her extremely thin figure or her alleged distant relationship with Meghan.
In a country where all female royal figures are compared to Diana, Catherine has always been “a true ‘people’s princess’,” says journalist Robert Jobson, writer of a book that appeared in 2010 about William and Catherine.
-Meeting with Guillermo-
Kate Middleton knocked on the door of the royal house at the age of 19, in September 2001. She had begun studying art history at the prestigious Scottish university of Saint Andrews, where William, whom she met at a bank on campus, was also studying.
A friendship began between the two that would end up becoming an idyll.
In their college years, the couple began sharing an apartment with three other students. But the trips they began to take together nevertheless revealed the beginning of their romance, with the press always behind them.
Catherine began making visits to Buckingham Palace, the official residence of the royal family, while William also regularly visited the property of his future dreams in Buckleberry.
There was, however, no decisive step to consolidate the relationship on the part of the prince, so the British tabloid press began to call Catherine “Waity Katty”, in a play on the English term “wait.” .
In that situation, the couple put a break on their relationship in 2007. But they got back together in 2008, until Guillermo asked her to marry him in October 2010, during a walk through a nature reserve in Kenya.
– «Woman of the 21st century» –
The couple chose Kensington Palace in London as their place of residence before moving in recent years to a house near Windsor Castle. They have three children: Jorge, Carlota and Luis.
Kate Middleton, unlike Sarah Ferguson, who was the wife of Prince Andrew, William’s uncle, or Meghan Markle, wife of his brother-in-law Enrique, won the affection of the British from the beginning.
The Princess of Wales, with the affection and approval of her compatriots, in some way emulates Diana, the mother-in-law whom she never met and who died in a traffic accident in 1997 in Paris.
The popularity of the princess, with a slim silhouette and sporty appearance, among her fellow citizens was growing by leaps and bounds with her eternal smile and her commitments to causes such as mental health or childhood.
With an image of a modern princess, Catherine is “more than anyone in the royal family” the “prototype of the 21st century woman,” Pauline MacLaran, a professor at Royal Holloway University, tells AFP.
He comes from a middle class family that managed to succeed in the business world.
His mother, who was a stewardess, and his father, an air traffic controller, made their fortune as entrepreneurs with a company called Party Pieces, specializing in mail order sales of items for children’s parties.
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© Agence France-Presse