Not only Kate Middleton: photos of British royalty at 40

Kate Middleton celebrated her 40th birthday on January 9th with three gorgeous portraits made by the photographer Paolo Roversi. The Duchess of Cambridge, who blew out the candles at a small family party, has crossed this milestone in a golden period of his life: many royal observers consider it, for character and dedication to the Crown, the perfect future queen of England, alongside her husband William.

Before her, many other members of the royal family celebrated forty springs. Scrolling through the album of real photographs, many beautiful images remind us of those times (see gallery under). But at what point had the parable of their life reached? There Queen Elizabeth, crowned at just 27 years old after the death of his father Giorgio, when he blew out forty candles, on April 21, 1966, it had reigned for over fourteen years. And had gave birth to her four children. As per character and inclination, always respectful of her role and her duties, the day after her birthday the sovereign gave a speech at the opening of the English Parliament. There Elizabeth’s younger sister, Princess Margaret, reached forty the August 21, 1970. At the time the passion with the fotografo Antony Armstrong-Jones, whom he had married ten years earlier in Westminster Abbey, was in full swing storm (as the TV series tells well The Crown). And the couple’s two children, David and Lady Sarah, were 9 and 6 years old, respectively.

At forty, celebrate on November 14, 1988, probably the prince Carlo he imagined ascending to the throne in a not too long period of time. It had already been thirty years since he had become theheir to the throne and he certainly could not have known that as many, indeed more, would pass, always waiting to take the place of his mother Elizabeth. In that 1988 the marriage of Carlo with Diana it was in fact already shipwrecked, even if not formally, despite the birth of two children William and Harry a few years ago. In December 1992, Prime Minister John Major announced their formal separation in Parliament. The divorce then came in 1996. Unlike Carlo, his younger brother Andrea, now a former “Royal Highness” due to the Epstein scandal, when it reached i forty years old, on March 10, 2004, he was already divorced from his wife Sarah Ferguson who between 1988 and 1990 gave him his two daughters Beatrice and Eugenia.

Princess Anna, then, he blew out 40 candles on August 15, 1990. The year before she had announced the separation from her first husband Mark Phillips, with whom he had had children Peter (born in 1977) e Zara (1981). Because he had found out that he he also had a secret daughter, conceived with a New Zealand girl when he was already married to her. Anna, with the official divorce in 1992, became the first of the Windsor brothers to cause scandal by breaking up their marriage. A few months later she was married again. This time with Timothy Laurence, her current husband.

Before Kate Middleton the last to reach the 40-year milestone was Meghan Markle. And, of course, the former American actress celebrated them very differently from her sister-in-law. August 4th of last year, after having blown out 40 candles, the Duchess of Sussex has launched – through the Archewell Foundation – a new project entitled “40×40” to “help women get back to work” after the pandemic. And it did by posting a video online in which her husband Harry appeared in the background as a juggler.

Want to find out what all British royals looked like at 40? Browse the gallery below.