A bold stare marked the turning point when Kate Middleton came into her own. It was immortalized in a 2021 photograph, taken on her way to Prince Philip’s funeral at Windsor Castle. “She radiated royal impregnability,” Robert Jobson writes in his new biography, Catherine, The Princess of Wales, about the picture snapped by Getty royal photographer Chris Jackson.

When Kate married into the Royal Family, she was told never to gaze directly at the paparazzi, because “celebrities look at the cameras,” Jobson noted in a recent phone interview from Dubai, where the British royal commentator, biographer and journalist was on assignment. 

“She looked like the matriarch of the family,” he says of the photograph, showing the future queen looking indomitable, dressed all in black, wearing a hat with a netted veil … and a face mask. “The family looked lost all around her, while she looked stoic.” He thinks this was the moment, after two decades with Prince William, 11 years of marriage and three children, when Kate fully inhabited the mantle of her role.

Covering Kate has become a thriving cottage industry: Glamorous and enigmatic, the 42-year-old drives newspaper sales and website clicks like no other royal. 

The family is missing her star power, as she recovers from cancer treatment, and this book will sate public hunger for Kate content. The last major book on her life was released more than a decade ago, when British journalist and royal commentator Katie Nicholl published Kate: The Future Queen.

Jobson’s intent was “to tell the story of Catherine from beginning to now,” and explain her significance as one of the few commoners to become Queen. The British Royal Family “has no idea of what it is to pay a mortgage,” while Kate’s family, even though they are part of the privileged middle class, “understands real life.” 

Jobson aimed to write a definitive biography, but there is very little new in the book. A quick summary of the tidbits he unearthed: Kate and William’s friends learned they were secretly dating during a game of “Never Have I Ever” at university; William once broke up with Kate by phone in those early years, but he was drawn back when she wore a sexy nurse costume to a “Freaky Naughty” party; and, at their wedding reception, the couple performed the dance from Grease to You’re the One that I Want.

Kate, whom Jobson studiously calls Catherine, is described by his on- and off-the-record sources in the royal household as: “down to earth,” “warm,” “ordinary,” “calm,” “sensible” and “easy-going.” At the end of Jobson’s re-creation of the wedding scene, he writes, “Catherine walks into the Royal world with a sun kissed radiance.” Royal purple prose, indeed.

Jobson has written 20 books about the Royal Family, from last year’s Our King: Charles III to several about Kate and William and their young family, plus one with Diana’s bodyguard, Ken Wharfe. After meeting Kate on several royal tours, he describes her as “a very polished individual,” adding that “she puts on quite a show for the public.”

In the book, Jobson maintains Kate found it daunting to walk in Diana’s footsteps and marry a future king, but points out how different their experiences were. At 19, “Diana just crashed into the life; she was forced to go straight into royal duties. She was a cover girl pre-mobile phones. There was an explosion of public interest that was very difficult to deal with.” Kate “came to it a lot later, and she was aware there were pitfalls. She was determined not to let the family down.”

In his biography, Jobson is remarkably restrained about the Meghan Markle years. The most he gets in the mud is to say “Meghan was piqued by the disparity” between the grand Apartment 1A on the Kensington Palace grounds, occupied by William and Kate, and the humbler Nottingham Cottage on the same estate, where Harry lived when she first met him. “If you look at Catherine’s life as a whole, that era – Meghan and Harry – was only a blip in it,” he says, in the interview. “After all the dramas of the ’90s, both William and Kate settled in to create a solid family unit.” Kate’s cancer diagnosis put everything in perspective. “My feeling is that the illnesses the King and Catherine have been dealing with have made them block out the noise and not worry about so-called dramas.” He moves the conversation along with a swift, “I wish them well,” about the Sussexes.

It’s been a rough ride for everyone. Kate’s cancer has clearly shaken William, and that resonates with Jobson. “In the blink of an eye, he could have been King overnight – horror of horrors – without the woman he loves by his side.” This is of a piece with how Jobson portrays the partnership between William and Kate. He often emphasizes how “in love” the two are. In the book, he describes the Buckingham Palace balcony kiss (actually two kisses) after their 2011 wedding, thus: “This was not just a kiss for the cameras; this was true love and everyone watching knew it.”

His desire to stay away from the salacious bits of the past few years is admirable. All the dirty-laundry airing has been tawdry. And Kate’s story, the fairy tale about a commoner turned princess turned woman ready to take on the role of Queen some day, is compelling – but the details of the hard work in between are less so. 

Although, like the Queen, Kate is royalty and a celebrity, the job is different now. The myth-making is accelerated by the need to feed the machine; even the Palace has taken to slick social media posts to release Royal Family news. Royal biographers used to be able to remain respectful and distant, but things have changed too much.  This book belongs to a different era.