Kate Middleton’s Recent Gesture Is Right Out of Princess Diana’s Playbook

During a surprise engagement on July 2, Kate Middleton took a page right out of her late mother-in-law Princess Diana’s royal playbook.

While visiting Colchester Hospital last Wednesday, Kate not only opened up about her experiences with cancer treatment, but also got her hands dirty—literally—planting flowers named in her honor in the hospital’s well-being garden. As the Princess of Wales planted “Catherine’s Rose,” she “surprised onlookers when she refused to wear gloves,” Hello! reported.

Sky News royal correspondent Rhiannon Mills was there, and told Hello! that the future queen was offered gloves but “She didn’t want gloves. She had filthy hands. My cameraman, who was there, kind of zoomed in on her filthy hands. He was like, ‘Oh, is that appropriate or not?’ And I was like, ‘Yes, it’s her getting her hands dirty.’”

“So while the palace keeps saying, ‘We’re going to have to all get used to that flexibility in terms of engagements she’s doing,’ I think, when she’s there—they are fully in,” Mills added.

Mills was also present not just for Kate’s turn at gardening, but also as Kate shared courageous comments about her cancer journey. “It was fascinating being in the room with her,” she said (via Hello!). “She very loudly and clearly wanted to get across this message that, yes, she is now effectively back to royal work, but it’s really difficult, and I certainly haven’t heard her publicly talk in the way that she did yesterday. Her words were really strong.”

“For me, it was the first time that she really clearly said, ‘I’m sorry, yes, I’m back at work, but now there are some times that I just can’t do what I used to be able to do,’” she continued. “She talked about the rollercoaster of it all, and kind of how it’s not just a smooth plane to recovery, but also very much for her, it did feel like a plea. It felt like, again, her reinforcing this message of, ‘I’m here. I’m here to do the public work. You are going to see me, but look, give me and my family a bit of understanding, but also be a bit more understanding towards other people who are also going through that difficult time.’”

Like Kate, Diana often eschewed wearing gloves, also to be more relatable to the public. Queen Elizabeth wore gloves consistently and constantly—not only to keep her hands clean, but also to avoid germs—but Diana ripped up that page of the royal playbook and went gloveless as soon as 1981 and her first year marrying into the royal family. She wanted to “convey approachability and warmth,” said Eleri Lynn, curator of the exhibit “Diana: Her Fashion Story” at Kensington Palace, Diana’s former home.

“She abandoned the royal protocol of wearing gloves because she liked to hold hands when visiting people or shake hands and have direct contact,” Lynn told People.

Newsweek reported that “One of Diana’s key aims was to remove the barriers that were placed between her and the general public because of the fact of who she was. Gloves were just a physical embodiment of this, and by removing them, she sought to connect more intimately with the people she met,” which the outlet called “radical thinking for the 1980s.”

Back to Kate for a moment—after getting her hands dirty in the garden on Wednesday, Kate took part in an impromptu and unplanned meet-and-greet with well-wishers clamoring to shake the Princess of Wales’s hand. But before she did so, Kate relatably said (per Hello!), “I’m just washing my hands—I’ll be back.”