Prince William Is Steering Princess Kate Into Princess Diana’s Footsteps, Former Royal Butler Says

Back in 2010—the year that the Prince and Princess of Wales (then Prince William and Kate Middleton) got engaged and the year before they married—William and Prince Harry appeared in an ITV interview, where Harry said, poignantly, “Every day—I know I do and I’m sure William does as well—whatever we do, wherever we are, and whoever we’re with, I particularly always wonder what she’d think, what she’d be doing if she was with us now,” he said of Princess Diana, the mother they lost as a result of a car accident on August 31, 1997. “If she’d be sitting here having a laugh, whether she’d be in the background sticking her tongue out, or whether she’d be playing football with the children. That’s what keeps us going every day—that thought of what would she be like if she was around today.”

That has only, no doubt, intensified as both William and Harry’s respective families have grown. William said in 2016 that he would have loved for Diana to have met Kate, whom he met four years after Diana’s death while both were first-year students at the University of St. Andrews: “Time makes it easier,” William said. “I still miss my mother every day—and it’s 20 years after she died.” He told GQ the next year, in 2017, “I would have love[d] her to have met Catherine and to have seen the children grow up,” he said. “It makes me sad that she won’t—that they will never know her.”

Paul Burrell was Diana’s butler and was employed by the royal family for 21 years. He told The Sun that William is “steering Kate into Diana’s footsteps,” adding that Kate has “never put a foot wrong.” 

Of Kate—who now carries the title of Princess of Wales, the title her mother-in-law made so famous in the 1980s and 1990s—Burrell said “I see the way she [Kate] dresses and the way she behaves, and if her mother-in-law could say anything, she would tell her that she’s doing an incredible job,” he said. “The country adores her.”

Burrell said of William that he is “fiercely protective” over Kate, and that the protectiveness “absolutely” comes from losing his mother when he was just 15 years old. “With William by her side, Kate’s safe because he will take care of her and would never let anyone harm her,” Burrell said.

If Diana had the chance to meet Kate, royal biographer and editor-in-chief of Majesty magazine Ingrid Seward said Diana would have “recognized how good Kate is” for her eldest son: “I think she would have been very fond of Kate because she does everything right and looks gorgeous,” Seward told The Daily Mail. “And I think she would have recognized how good Kate is for William, because William is emotional and difficult.”

Seward also added that Diana would have been a fantastic grandmother—and she would be one times five, as William and Kate share Prince George, Princess Charlotte, and Prince Louis, and Harry and Meghan Markle share Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet.

“The goddess grandmother, definitely,” Seward said.