The Princess of Wales’ relationship with Queen Elizabeth II has been pulled into public focus after footage of the pair warmly greeting during a 2012 royal engagement has resurfaced on social media site TikTok.
Kate and the queen first met in 2008 at the wedding of the monarch’s eldest grandson, Peter Phillips. At the time, Kate was dating Prince William, and later reflected that the queen had been “very friendly” to her after the ceremony.
Following her own marriage in 2011, Kate and Elizabeth were photographed together on a number of occasions at official events and in 2022, the princess participated in a number of mourning events for the queen following her death at the age of 96.
Kate’s induction into the royal family is expected to be covered in the final episodes of Netflix’s royal drama, The Crown, airing in December.
Uploaded to TikTok by user star2810.mt, on November 29, viral footage shows William and Kate greeting the queen as she exited the royal train for a rare joint engagement with her grandson and granddaughter-in-law in 2012.
Anwar Hussein/WireImage
As the monarch stepped onto the train station platform in Nottingham, England, to attend an event connected with her Diamond Jubilee, William walked forward to greet her with a kiss and customary bow. In turn, cameras captured the moment Kate stepped forward, offering one of her signature curtsies and also kissing the monarch on the cheek.
Captioned “Prince William and Kate Greeting Queen,” the clip has been viewed over 120,000 times on the social media site in 24 hours, receiving in excess of 3,000 likes and numerous comments, many of which have praised the moment between the royals.
“You can tell the Queen loves Kate,” wrote one TikTok user.
“Look how much respect they have. Look how warm the queen is to them,” posted another, with a further comment reading: “The Queen was beautiful to the end.”
Since joining the monarchy, Kate has adopted the royal family’s unofficial motto of “never complain, never explain,” and therefore little is known about her relationships with members of her husband’s family because she has refrained from speaking publicly about them.
There have however been rare occasions where the princess has flexed this rule, one of which saw her participate alongside other royals in a documentary marking the queen’s 90th birthday in 2016.
In it, Kate described her first solo engagement with the queen, which was to the city of Leicester in 2012, and how she followed the experienced monarch’s example.
“She’s been very generous in not sort of being forceful at all in any of her views, but I feel she’s been there as sort of a gentle guidance really for me,” Kate told documentary viewers.
“The most memorable engagement for me I suppose was an away day to Leicester and I went without William so I was rather apprehensive about that.
“I think there is a real art to walkabouts, everyone teases me in the family that I spend far too long chatting so I think I’ve still got to learn a little bit more and pick up a few more tips I suppose. She was very supportive. The fact she took the time to make sure that I was happy and looked after for that particular occasion, which probably in everything that she’s doing is a very small element, which just shows how caring she is, really.”
James Crawford-Smith is Newsweek‘s royal reporter, based in London. You can find him on X (formerly Twitter) at @jrcrawfordsmith and read his stories on Newsweek‘s The Royals Facebook page.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.