Family is at the heart of Prince Charles’ personal and public life, and his cancer diagnosis would have brought those closest to him together.
In a video statement announcing her health, Kate stressed the importance of giving her children, Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis, the time and space to deal with their mother’s illness.
The princess’s main public project is supporting children’s early development, and last year she launched “Shaping Us”, a long-term campaign she describes as her “life’s work”, aimed at focusing on the crucial first five years of a child’s life.
Since marrying Prince Charles in 2011 and becoming Princess Duchess, Kate has carefully built this public role around a focus on the well-being and mental health of her children.
She grew up enjoying a happy family life, maintaining a close relationship with her parents, Carole and Michael Middleton, and siblings, Pippa Matthews and James Middleton.
Catherine Elizabeth Middleton was born on January 9, 1982, at the Royal Berkshire Hospital in Reading to the Middleton family.
She was baptized on 20 June that year at St Andrew’s, Bradfield Parish Church, Berkshire.
For a few years in the mid-1980s, Kate and her family lived in Amman, Jordan, where she attended nursery school from the age of three, after which the family returned to the Berkshires.
At the age of 13, she enrolled at Marlborough College, a prestigious private, part-boarding school in Wiltshire.
She graduated with a second class honours in Art History from the University of St Andrews in 2005, where she met and began a relationship with William, and they married at Westminster Abbey in 2011.
She was nicknamed “Wait Katie” by the press for her patience during their long relationship, and William described her as having “a really naughty sense of humour” during their engagement interview.
An avid photographer, the princess often takes publicly available photographs to mark her children’s birthdays.
Kate is known for her healthy, sportsmanlike and competitive nature in team games and enjoys the thrill of cold water swimming.
Speaking to former rugby union boss Mike Tindall, who is married to her husband’s cousin Zara, in September last year, she said her family had “always been active”.
“I think we were just a very active family,” she says, “and I always remember being physically active, whether it was walking, climbing in the Lake District in Scotland, or swimming from an early age.”
Kate also spoke about the appeal of cold water dips: “Swimming in cold water, the colder the better. I absolutely love it. So dark and rainy that Prince William would say, ‘You’re crazy.’
“I’m going to go find some cold water. I love it.”
