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Kate Middleton, the true queen of Wimbledon: but could she lose her mind?

It is no mystery that Kate Middleton, future queen consort, goes crazy about tennis: when she arrives at the Royal Box at Wimbledon, the photographers turn their backs on the champions and begin to take advantage of the delightful opportunity to have her there, in full sun, without a discreet courtier, a helicopter, the increasingly present three children or an official commitment if you take it away.

The Duchess of Cambridge and Prince William in the Royal Box of the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club in Wimbledon on 5 July (Photo by Karwai Tang / WireImage).

Karwai Tang

While the fashion experts immediately go to see what she is wearing (this time Alessandra Rich shirt dress with polka dots and puff sleeves, Finlay glasses and Mulberry bag), how she wears it, for those who support – but she is careful to share the smiles: the real in sport are fair by definition – Vanity Fair America drew a curious comparison between Kate and the other queen who was very passionate about tennis, but many centuries before Kate: Anna Bolena. The unfortunate wife of Henry VIII and the future queen consort have been compared, starting with tennis.

A portrait of Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII’s second wife, from 1533, three years before she was beheaded in the Tower of London by her husband Henry VIII on charges of adultery. It is located at the National Portrait Gallery in London. (Photo by Robert Alexander / Getty Images)

Robert Alexander / Getty Images

But how can Anna Bolena look like Kate Middleton? The most controversial of the English queen consorts, a sort of Helen of Troy, of Yoko Ono of the Tudor era for the power she exercised over the king, so strong that even the most rigid historians admit it was also due to a very strong physical attraction (just have seen The Tudors, a series that was not so surreal) and the Duchess who seems to know how to stay perfectly in her place, without ever invading the space granted even with a cleat of her famous “nude” pumps. But the points in common between the two are many. Starting with tennis.

Kate at Wimbledon 2017. (Photo by Clive Brunskill / Getty Images)

Clive Brunskill / Getty Images

In fact, Anna Bolena was arrested on charges of adultery – and then unfortunately beheaded – from her husband just as he was watching a game of the ancestor of tennis in Greenwich in 1536. But then there is the enormous capacity for both of them to be able to marry a king “at the table” just because they wanted to, which was unheard of in 1500 , but also a bit at the time when Kate dropped out of her coveted enrollment at the University of Edinburgh to rush to St Andrews, just the day when the 19-year-old William announced that he was going to study there, it seems almost forced by his mother Carole Middleton . Anna Bolena was her own orphan, but her father Thomas and her uncle were no less determined to get her a place at court. Both beautiful women, determined, and with a son who will become king.

Kate plays – for fun – against champion Emma Raducanu in 2021. (Photo by Chris Jackson / Getty Images for LTA)

Chris Jackson / Getty Images

In fact, if many remember only the tragic end of Anna Bolena, hardly anyone considers that she was the mother of the child who later became one of the most important English queens in history, more than Queen Victoria: Elizabeth I. To be the daughter of a disgraced queen is no small thing. It means that her mother, in dying, had left solid conditions for a feisty little girl like her, who had raised her, and even breastfed, an inconceivable thing for a queen of the 1500s, and not only was she not killed with all the relatives, but he reigned with unparalleled power during the English golden age. Will George be a king who will leave his mark? All the premises say yes. Certainly his mother is “immensely popular,” he told Vanity Fair Robert Lacey, the historical consultant for The Crown. “She is the pillar of the royal family, practically already a queen consort.” Neither born into the high nobility, their parents bet on the same weapon as a ram to break through the royal gates and sit as close to the throne as possible: an impeccable upbringing. Anna Bolena had studied music, art, spoke several languages, at the time for a very rare woman, and had traveled, she was super intelligent. Kate, by now we know, has chosen schools “that lead to court” since childhoodand before William’s St. Andrew’s he attended Marlborough College, one of the most prestigious English schools.

Novak Djokovic receives the trophy from Kate after the final against Roger Federer at Wimbledon 2019. (Photo by Clive Brunskill / Getty Images)

Clive Brunskill / Getty Images

At Wimbledon 2021 (Photo by Karwai Tang / WireImage)

Karwai Tang

Sure, Kate didn’t need to cause an imperial divorce, and change the religion of an entire country to be able to marry like Anna Bolena did, but the Windsors have already given up on tragic divorces. It is no coincidence that among the few certainties of today, a separation between Kate and William is not even among the voices of the bookmakers, it simply does not exist, say the insiders in Windsor: every gossip about the royal couple of the century, however things may be, in a very short time evaporates, beheaded on the fly as he arrived.

Source: Vanity Fair

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