How Queen Elizabeth Let Her Guard Down During Kate Middleton’s First Balmoral Trip

Queen Elizabeth reportedly exerted an effort to make Meghan Markle feel welcome in the royal family so that she will not feel isolated like Princess Diana. But it has just been revealed that Her Majesty also did a similar thing for Kate Middleton years ago.

During the Duchess of Cambridge’s first trip to Balmoral, while she was just Prince William’s girlfriend, she managed to do something that was otherwise forbidden on the grounds of the Queen’s vacation home. In “Kate: The Future Queen,” royal author Katie Nicholl said that Prince William’s grandmother made a touching adjustment to make Kate feel at home.

“Until now, the Queen had met Kate only fleetingly at the wedding of Peter and Autumn Phillips, but she went out of her way to make her feel welcome, giving her permission to take pictures at Balmoral,” she said. “As a woman who has lived her entire life in the public eye, the Queen rarely lets her guard down, and very few apart from her family and closest friends get to see the real Elizabeth,” Nicholl added.

Nicholl also told Express that the Queen and Kate have a wonderful relationship with each other. In fact, the 93-year-old monarch thinks that her grandson’s wife is quite entertaining.

“Kate was always a slow but steady integrator into the royal firm and her slightly traditional approach, making very few if any ripples in continuity, does seem to have resonated with the Queen, who increasingly appears to treat her as a friend as well as a daughter-in-law,” Nicholl said. The two female royals, who have very important roles in the royal family, are also adept maskers.

This means that they are able to use body language techniques to keep their feelings as private as possible. The Queen and Kate have also perfected their social smile and some of their nonverbal traits. They also look pitch-perfect at all times, which gives the public the impression that their lives are also perfect.

Kate wed Prince William on April 29, 2011, at Westminster Abbey. Shortly after their wedding, the future queen consort went on a solo engagement with the Queen in Lancaster. While there, the two royals were photographed chatting and smiling from ear to ear.