The Sweet Reason Kate Middleton’s Latest Visit Feels Like a Tribute to Queen Elizabeth
Kate Middleton visited Leicester city while Prince William was in Cornwall marking St. Piran's Day.
Kate Middleton retraced her steps back to a familiar place– the place she had first walked as a royal with the late Queen Elizabeth. The Princess of Wales visited Leicester this week, just one day after the explosion of color that marks Holi, the beloved Hindu festival heralding spring, love, and new beginnings.
Middleton made an unannounced visit to Leicester — a city that pulses with the richness of South Asian life. With roughly 43% of its population of South Asian heritage, including 34% of Indian descent, the city holds one of the most vibrant diasporic communities in the United Kingdom. The Princess of Wales, 44, was welcomed with warmth and gifted a red flower necklace upon arrival, which sat right on her cream ensemble. According to Hello! magazine, she said then, "Thank you so much for having me. I'm looking forward to seeing some of the work — I've heard some fantastic things."
Her morning began at the dance company of Aakash Odedra, an award-winning choreographer, and Middleton watched a rehearsal of his newest work, Songs of the Bulbul — a piece about an ancient Sufi parable about a caged songbird longing for freedom. From there, Middleton made her way to the city's iconic "Golden Mile," a luminous stretch of largely family-run businesses that is one of the country's highest concentrations of Indian jewelry, sari boutiques, and fashion houses.
On the same day, the Princess visited the Hindu temple of Shreeji Dham Haveli, which is dedicated to the teachings of Shrimad Vallabhacharya Mahaprabhuji. She removed her sandals and participated in the traditional dance.
What is especially nostalgic is that almost 14 years ago, on March 8, 2012, Middleton made her very first official visit to Leicester, and she did so alongside Queen Elizabeth herself. The two arrived by train, the journey forming the opening leg of the monarch's Diamond Jubilee tour across Britain. Their first stop was De Montfort University, where they attended a student fashion show — and by all accounts, the two were entirely at ease with one another.
"They were chatting away," Lord Waheed Alli, then chancellor of the university, recalled to PEOPLE! "Kate would ask me things and then tell the Queen." Dr. Julie King, head of the university's School of Fashion and Textiles, was equally struck by the harmony between them. "The Queen has been doing this for so long and is so experienced and just seems to set everyone at ease. And Kate's got that manner as well."
Following that, in November 2018, Kate and Prince William traveled to the city under altogether different circumstances, to offer comfort to those mourning the death of Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, the beloved chairman of Leicester City Football Club, who perished alongside four others in a helicopter crash just outside the stadium that October. While Middleton was in Leicester, her husband, Prince William, 43, was in Cornwall marking St. Piran's Day, the county's proud annual celebration of Cornish heritage and identity.
