After Sophie, the Countess of Wessex, was made the Duchess of Edinburgh last Friday, she organized some embiggening articles right away. I mean, she worked in PR for years – while I find Sophie heavy-handed, she has somewhat better PR instincts than most of the Windsors. Still, her triumph at finally becoming the DoE meant that she might have overstepped a little with this Times of London piece: “Sophie, the Duchess of Edinburgh who works harder than Kate, William or Camilla.” It reads like a simple biographical article about Sophie’s twenty-plus years in the Firm, but making her sound more hard-working than William, Kate and Queen Camilla? That won’t make her many friends within the fam. Some interesting and curious highlights from this Times piece:
Hard working: The former Countess of Wessex, 58, carried out 138 official engagements in 2022, more than the Prince and Princess of Wales, and Queen Camilla. She has been a full-time working royal for 21 years, after marrying Prince Edward in 1999. Born Sophie Helen Rhys-Jones, she has been described by the media as “the girl next door” and by Princess Diana as “Little Miss Goody Two Shoes”. More recently, she has been called the royal family’s “safest pair of hands”, their “secret weapon”, a “second daughter” to the late Queen and an “unappreciated trooper”.
She’s popular within the family?? Within the family, the duchess is popular. “She got on very well with Philip,” royal author Ingrid Seward previously told The Sunday Times. “The Queen always found that a bit of a relief, if female members of the family knew how to handle Philip. She made him laugh, and was not fazed by his abruptness. She would not let him bully her.” Queen Elizabeth, apparently, admired her work ethic and modesty, and they travelled together to church and watched historical documentaries. The duchess visited the monarch every weekend after the death of Philip and called her every day. Instead of “Her Majesty”, she was “Mama”.
Mediator Sophie: Royal sources, too, have said Sophie has the warmth and empathy to be the mediator between the Duke and Duchess of Sussex and the rest of the family. “Inevitably the spotlight and the focus falls on younger members as time goes on,” she said in 2021. “Naturally, the media are looking for people to fill the so-called void. But you know, we have been doing this for what feels like a pretty long time.”
[From The Times]
For what it’s worth, I do think Philip and QEII liked Sophie. Now, the rest of the family? I don’t know. Charles seems pretty annoyed with Edward and Sophie most of the time. Sophie and Ed try to ingratiate themselves with William and Kate, but I often think their efforts fall flat. And no, Sophie isn’t the mediator for the Sussexes. After the way Sophie has acted towards and about the Sussexes, she’s persona non grata. As for “hard working” – like, 138 official engagements in a year isn’t a lot. That doesn’t say that Sophie is hard working, it says that Camilla, Kate and William are lazy as f–k.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.
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