Kate and William design children's upbringing around Middleton family values
Catherine Mayer's book explores how royal women navigate duty, family and personal identity
Prince William and Princess Catherine have deliberately structured their children's upbringing to prioritise grounded, family-oriented values over traditional royal convention, according to a new book by Royal Author Catherine Mayer. In Divide and Rule: Royal Women and Their Battles, Mayer details how the couple spent years living relatively privately — first on the Welsh island of Anglesey while William served as a search-and-rescue pilot for the Royal Air Force, and later at the 10-bedroom Anmer Hall in Norfolk during his time with the East Anglian Air Ambulance service. The book argues that even as full royal duties eventually called, the couple actively pushed back against the institutional pressures that shaped previous generations.
A deliberate choice to be different
Mayer writes that the couple's more private years were always destined to end, but that their commitment to a different kind of royal parenting has endured. "[Princess Kate and Prince William] lived on the Welsh island of Anglesey while William served as a search-and-rescue pilot for the Royal Air Force, then relocated to the 10-bedroom Anmer Hall in Norfolk so he could take up a post at the East Anglian Air Ambulance service," she writes. She adds: "Their idyll, however, was drawing to a close in more ways than one."
On what came next, Mayer writes: "Soon, William would be called upon to stop playacting at being a regular person and embrace his destiny as a full-time royal. Even then, he and Kate would push back, maintaining a schedule designed to give their children something closer to Middletonian nurturing than the haphazard upbringing that scarred generations of royals."
