Kate Elisabeth is not the first famous British Nationality nor the first to have an affair with a public figure. Yet, in contrast to Kate, who was committed to her marriage and looked forward to her future in the public eye, Joanna was more secretive about her feelings for her husband and seemed preoccupied with being an “independent woman”. As a result of Kate’s death, Joanna was catapulted into the limelight with her fairytale wedding. But there were issues with this: Kate had been dead for almost ten years when she died; the papers were issued prematurely, and there were obvious signs that Kate had not really been happy about being a public figure as much as it appeared. And now that she was the Queen of England, all of Kate’s privacy and mystique were gone – and what of her marriage? In the words of a character from a recent movie, Kate had always “ran away” from the people who loved her, and now that her public image is back in the spotlight, what happens next?
As a matter-of-fact, Kate was not entirely alone in the public spotlight after losing her title and her position as Queen, after all: Her brother, Edward, had also had an affair with a member of the press. But as far as public figures go, Kate Elisabeth was simply one of the most “celebrities” of her day – which, in itself, underlines the difficulty of defining an identity in the face of such public scrutiny. If Kate was hoping for a celebrity portrait or photo book of sorts, she would have been better served by turning to her public image rather than her marriage record or background. But as Kate showed in her recently-published memoir, The Spilling, the press can be surprisingly adept at playing the role of divider, taking Kate’s private details and using them against her.
It is in this context that The Spilling becomes a reading experience more than a straightforward biography: the reader is invited to scrutinize Kate Elisabeth’s image within the public eye. After all, if Kate’s marriage had failed, she would have been left to suffer the public spectacle of a divorce, not have her private identity reconfigured by the media. Instead, by placing Kate in the spotlight, the press plays a game of identity theft, playing an active role in defining Kate Elisabeth’s “identity,” and leaving the reader to sift for clues in an increasingly blurred world. As the name suggests, then, the Spilling taps into the fractured identity of modern women and asks us to scrutinize our own. And as the title suggests, the results are almost always enlightening.