When Prince William becomes king, Kate Middleton will be queen consort. Does this mean that her middle-class parents, Carole and Michael Middleton, will receive royal titles?
According to experts, it is highly unlikely. Although the former flight attendant and the former pilot are very close to the royal family, very close to William, and very present in the lives of grandchildren Prince George, Princess Charlotte, and Prince Louis, there is no hint of royal titles in their future because they are reserved for those who are born or marry into the royal family. Instead, titles of nobility are passed down from generation to generation or granted by the reigning monarch. There are rumors in English high society that Carole and Michael, who went out of their way to help William and Kate when the princess was being treated for cancer (and continue to support them now that their daughter’s illness is in remission), deserve to receive the title of earls. However, no such precedent appears in history: family members of a queen consort have never received such an honor.
Take the case of Queen Camilla: her parents are dead, but she has two children, Tom Parker Bowles and Laura Lopes, born of her first marriage to Andrew Parker Bowles. A food critic and an art gallerist, respectively, the queen’s children continued to live a middle-class existence even after King Charles III ascended the throne. So did Camilla’s sister Annabel Elliot, an interior designer who was also highly regarded by the king, who for years relied on her to furnish his historic residences. Annabel’s life after her coronation remained the same: Camilla did not even include her among the “queen’s companions,” a modern version of “ladies-in-waiting.” One day, when she becomes queen, Catherine may want Carole or her sister Pippa Matthews by her side among the ladies-in-waiting. But this would not mean giving them a noble title.
Titles aside, Kate is very close to her family. The Middletons live just a few miles from the home of the Princes of Wales in Windsor and are a constant presence in the lives of grandchildren George, 12, Charlotte, 10, and Louis, 7. Carole, in particular, has always been described as an “omnipresent” grandmother in the lives of the little princes. She herself had recounted some time ago that when hosting the children at her Berkshire estate, she really doesn’t spare any effort to entertain them: “I want to run down the hills, climb the trees and go through the tunnel at the playground,” she told Good Housekeeping in May. “As long as I am able to, that’s what I’ll be doing. I cook with them, I muck around dancing, we go on bike rides.” When Kate Middleton was ill, the former airline steward and her husband went out of their way to help the Wales family. Nevertheless, according to experts, when their daughter becomes queen they will continue their existence without royal titles.
Original story published in Vanity Fair Italia.
