Princess Charlotte was her late grandmother, Princess Diana’s mini-me at Princess Kate Middleton’s annual “Together at Christmas” carol service.
The Princess of Wales, 42, hosted her annual holiday concert at Westminster Abbey, on Friday, December 6, where she was joined by her husband, Prince William, and their three children, Prince George, 11, Charlotte, 9, and Prince Louis, 6.
A photo taken of Charlotte at the event drew comparisons to Diana as the young princess glared at a photographer while passing by. A fan account dedicated to the royal family shared a side-by-side comparison of the “Spencer Stare” via Instagram of Charlotte next to a photo of her grandmother giving a camera a similar stern look.
“Aw those eyes are the same for Diana and Charlotte,” one fan wrote via the Instagram comments, while another noted the “striking resemblance.” Others however, thought Charlotte resemble a different family member. “She looks like her great grandmother the Queen Elizabeth,” one person wrote.
Even without the family resemblance, Kate and William — who welcomed Charlotte in May 2015 — also graced their only daughter with Diana as a middle name to honor the late Princess of Wales, who died tragically in a car crash in Paris in 1997.
“We’ve got more photos up around the house of her, and we talk about her a bit and stuff,” William explained during the 2017 HBO documentary Diana, Our Mother: Her Life and Legacy. “And it’s hard because obviously Catherine didn’t know her, so she cannot really provide that level of detail. So I do regularly, putting George and Charlotte to bed, talk about her, and just try to remind them that there are two grandmothers — there were two grandmothers in their lives. And it’s important they know who she was and that she existed.”
Diana’s influence has even extended to how Wiliam and Kate have chosen to raise their children. A source exclusively told Us Weekly in August 2019, “Diana was such a wonderful mother. William and Kate are doing their best to take after her when it comes to raising George, Charlotte and Louis. They’re determined to give their kids a normal life, just like Diana did.”
At Friday’s carol service, Charlotte and Kate were the twins, as they both donned red coat dresses, while William and the boys donned navy suits with complementary maroon ties.
Earlier this year, Kate was diagnosed with an undisclosed form of cancer but revealed in September that she had finished her chemotherapy treatment. Royal author Phil Dampier told Hello! on December 2 that Charlotte had been a huge help to her mother while she was undergoing her cancer treatment.
“I’m told that although the Princess of Wales has obviously been looking after her children during her cancer treatment, and reassuring them she is getting better,” he told the outlet. “Charlotte has been a great source of strength to her.”
Dampier added, “Winston Churchill once said of the late Queen Elizabeth when she was a child that he had never seen such maturity in someone so young. And Charlotte seems to have inherited that trait from her great-grandmother, to whom she bears an uncanny resemblance.”
