Today Kate Middleton, the Princess of Wales, celebrates her 41st birthday – but her special day has seemingly been marred in recent years – not least by events concerning Prince Harry and Meghan Markle
It’s a special day for the Princess of Wales today – that’s because she turns 41, just a day before Prince Harry’s controversial memoir Spare hits shelves.
Kate will likely mark the day in a private family way amid a period of fracture and turmoil for the royal family.
A flood of bombshell claims have emerged from Harry’s tell-all autobiography Spare, and the Prince made even more allegations in two tell-all interviews broadcast in the UK and US last night.
In both the book and the interviews, Harry mentions his sister-in-law and how she and his wife Meghan Markle never really got on.
But it is not the first time Kate’s birthday has fallen in the shadow of bombshell revelations from the Sussex camp.
The day before her 38th birthday in 2020, Harry and Meghan made the shock announcement that they would be stepping back as senior members of the royal family.
It led to days of turmoil, which came to a head several days later at the so-called Sandringham Summit.
One year later in 2021 when she turned 39, Kate’s birthday was overshadowed by a third Covid-19 lockdown.
Just the day before, her big day, the UK government put in place stay-at-home orders yet again in order to stop the spread of the virus.
And last year, when she reached the landmark age of 40, fears over the Omicron variant of Covid put paid to any celebrations at the time.
It was reported she and Prince William would later have a joint 40th celebration hosted by the late Queen – but that doesn’t appear to have happened.
Meanwhile also at the time Kate turned 40, the royals were embroiled in the fallout of the Prince Andrew scandal.
Kate, who was born in 1982, grew up in Bucklebury, Berkshire, and went to the private boarding school Marlborough College.
She met William in 2001 while studying art history at the University of St Andrews in Scotland.
The couple, who briefly split in 2007, married in April 2011 at Westminster Abbey and have since had three children – Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis.
Despite their previously close relationship, Kate wasn’t exempt from Harry’s attacks in last night’s interviews. Harry accused her of “stereotyping” Meghan, saying her behaviour caused a barrier in the chat with ITV.
Asked why the relationship got off on a bad note, Harry says there were “lots of different reasons”.
He went on: “I don’t think they were ever expecting me to get into a relationship with someone like Meghan, who had, you know, a very successful career.
“There was a lot of stereotyping that was happening, that I was guilty of as well, at the beginning.”
English