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| Katharine | |
|---|---|
| Duchess of Kent | |
| Spouse | Prince Edward, Duke of Kent |
| Issue | |
| George Windsor, Earl of St Andrews Lady Helen Taylor Lord Nicholas Windsor |
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| Full name | |
| Katharine Lucy Mary[1] | |
| Titles and styles | |
| HRH The Duchess of Kent Miss Katharine Worsley |
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| House | House of Windsor |
| Father | Sir William Worsley, 4th Bt. |
| Mother | Joyce Morgan Brunner |
| Born | 22 February 1933 Hovingham Hall, Yorkshire |
| Religion | Roman Catholic prev. Anglican |
Katharine, Duchess of Kent (Katharine Lucy Mary; née Worsley, 22 February 1933) is a member of the British Royal Family, the wife of Prince Edward, Duke of Kent, a grandson of King George V and cousin of Queen Elizabeth II.
The Duchess of Kent gained attention for her conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1994, the first senior Royal convert publicly since the passing of the Act of Settlement 1701. The Duchess of Kent is strongly associated with the world of music, and has performed as a member of several choirs. She is also well-known as the presenter of trophies at the annual Wimbledon lawn tennis championships – a role she inherited from her mother-in-law, Princess Marina.
The Duchess's warm and informal manner has won her many admirers. She prefers to be known in her private life as Katharine Kent. She also has expressed a preference for being known as Katharine, Duchess of Kent, a style usually reserved for divorced or widowed peeresses. However, her formal title remains Her Royal Highness The Duchess of Kent.
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Katharine Lucy Mary Worsley was born at Hovingham Hall, Yorkshire, and was the only daughter of Sir William Arthrington Worsley, Bt., and his wife, Joyce Morgan, daughter of Sir John Fowler Brunner, Bt. and granddaughter of Sir John Tomlinson Brunner, Bt., the founder of Brunner Mond, which later became ICI (Imperial Chemical Industries).
She was educated at Queen Margaret's School near York and at Runton Hill School in Norfolk. At school she was introduced to music, and was taught to play the piano, organ and violin, which she still plays today. She later worked for some time in a children's home in York and worked at a nursery school in London. She failed to gain admission to the Royal Academy of Music but followed her brothers to Oxford, where they were at the University, to study at Miss Hubler's Finishing School, 22 Merton Street, devoting much of her time to music.
On 8 June 1961, she married Prince Edward, Duke of Kent, the eldest son of Prince George, Duke of Kent and Princess Marina of Greece and Denmark, at York Minster. After her marriage she was styled Her Royal Highness The Duchess of Kent.
The Duke and Duchess of Kent have three children:
The couple also had a stillborn child in 1977, a loss that caused the Duchess to fall into a state of severe depression, which she has spoken about publicly.
The Duchess of Kent was received into the Roman Catholic Church in 1994. This was a personal decision, and she received the approval of the Queen. As she explained in an interview on BBC, "I do love guidelines and the Catholic Church offers you guidelines. I have always wanted that in my life. I like to know what's expected of me. I like being told: You shall go to church on Sunday and if you don't you're in for it!"[citation needed] Basil Cardinal Hume, then Archbishop of Westminster and thus spiritual leader of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, warned the Church against triumphalism over the Duchess' conversion.
Although the Act of Settlement 1701 means a member of the Royal Family marrying a Roman Catholic relinquishes their right of succession to the British throne, the Act does not include marriage to an Anglican who subsequently becomes a Roman Catholic. Therefore, the Duke of Kent did not lose his place in the line of succession to the British throne.
Since then her younger son, Lord Nicholas Windsor, her grandson, Edward Windsor, Lord Downpatrick, and her granddaughter Lady Marina-Charlotte Windsor have also become Roman Catholics. Her older son, the Earl of St. Andrews, father of Lord Downpatrick, is married to a Roman Catholic and thus has been excluded from the succession.
The Duchess of Kent decided not to personally use the style Her Royal Highness in 2002 and to reduce her royal duties. Since then she has been informally known as Katharine Kent, although her formal style (e.g. in the Court Circular) remains HRH The Duchess of Kent. By way of example, when she made a formal appearance to confer awards at the BBC's Young Musician of the Year competition in 2002, she asked the organizers to introduce her as "Katharine, Duchess of Kent."
In keeping with her withdrawal from full royal duties, the Duchess took a position as a music teacher in Wansbeck Primary School in Kingston upon Hull. In 2005 the Duchess spoke in an interview on BBC Radio 3 of her liking of rap music and of the singer/songwriter, Dido, whose record, "Thank You", she chose as one of her favourite pieces of music.
The Duchess has been dogged by unsubstantiated press reports that she and her husband have lived apart for many years and that they intend to divorce. Her absences, not only from state occasions, but also from family celebrations such as the Queen's Diamond Wedding dinner at Clarence House and Peter Phillips's wedding at Windsor, now go largely unnoticed.
Reports by the BBC have stated that the Duchess suffers from chronic fatigue syndrome, while the Mail on Sunday reported that she suffers from depression. By 1999 she had apparently completely recovered from chronic ill-health, and when asked by the Daily Mail what had suddenly changed, she answered, without elaboration, that she had been suffering unknowingly from coeliac disease (a serious and potentially debilitating auto-immune disease in which a variety of diverse symptoms can be triggered by the ingestion of the protein gluten). She stepped down from her role as head of the M.E. Society in the UK after this new diagnosis, and has since energetically worked with various charities and schools. When asked by the Daily Mail in 1999 about her long history of illness, her reply was simply that "none of us goes through life unscathed".
The effects of her undiagnosed disease gained her the reputation among Royalist circles as a "malingerer" who was routinely unwilling to perform basic public duties either owing to laziness or to benign mental illness. The eventual proof that she was in fact, suffering a legitimate physical illness and her subsequent full recovery has apparently done little to mitigate this negative perception. The Royal Family's rejection of her is thought to be a major reason she has in turn distanced herself from them (including her own husband) over the years, and is possibly why she insists on being called "Katharine Kent" or even "Katharine Worsley" in private life. It is also believed that it was her (unjustly assessed) example which especially hardened the Royals against Diana, Princess of Wales when the latter began to have emotional difficulties. The Queen Mother reportedly expressed a sentiment akin to "Not again!" (referring to Katharine Kent) when faced with Diana's inability to live up to the Royal Family's expectations.
Though now fully recovered through following a gluten-free diet, she reportedly still suffers bouts of depression. As she told the BBC in 2004, when asked to comment on rumours about her having been depressed, "Aren't we all? We all get slightly low periods in our lives, don't we?" In 1998, she told an interviewer about her lack of confidence. "I can still be very shy walking into a room full of strangers," she said. "I know how to do it, but I have never gained confidence. It is one of the reasons I am always trying to boost other people's self-esteem; because I know what it's like not to have it."
| Order of precedence in the United Kingdom | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by The Duchess of Gloucester |
Ladies HRH The Duchess of Kent |
Succeeded by Princess Michael of Kent |
| Academic offices | ||
| Preceded by Mary, Princess Royal |
Chancellor of the University of Leeds 1965–1998 |
Succeeded by Melvyn Bragg |
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| Persondata | |
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| NAME | Kent, Katharine |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Windsor, Katharine Lucy Mary; Worsley, Katharine Lucy Mary |
| SHORT DESCRIPTION | Wife of Prince Edward, Duke of Kent |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 22 February 1933 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Hovingham, North Yorkshire, United Kingdom |
| DATE OF DEATH | |
| PLACE OF DEATH | |
