Royals Understood They Needed to "Embrace" Kate Middleton, To Avoid the "Mistakes" Made With Princess Diana: Expert

When Kate Middleton joined the Royal Family in 2011, cementing her future as the next Princess of Wales, the Firm knew they needed to handle things differently than they did with her predecessor Princess Diana.

"Kate was, you know, a breath of fresh air," former royal press secretary Ed Perkins said on ITV's new documentary The Real Crown: Inside the House of Windsor (via Express).

"The public recognized that, but I suspect the family also understood that whatever mistakes had been made previously with Diana, it was important to embrace Kate and to understand the role that she could bring would potentially be massively important."

While people's opinions will differ on the mistakes the Royal Family as a whole made with Princess Diana, we can certainly say that the strong feelings she inspired in people all over the world were somewhat underestimated by the Firm.

Perkins, who directed the documentary The Princess, previously described that film (and Diana's life), saying, "this is a story of someone who managed to effect change in people’s lives, and continues to do so. You had someone who people could project their own hopes and dreams and fears onto and find a strangely personal connection to. It was only once she was gone that lots of people realized what they’d lost."

By contrast, Princess Kate has appeared to mostly be very popular among royal fans and the Royal Family itself ever since she first became the Duchess of Cambridge. For one thing, she tends to represent consistency, whereas sadly Diana's era came with seismic shifts in the fabric of the monarchy—namely her own divorce, as well as those of Princess Anne and Prince Andrew, followed by Diana's untimely death in 1997.