Pippa Middleton’s Birthday Becomes Another Excuse to Compare Her With Kate

The Daily Mail has turned its attention to Pippa Middleton, using a birthday profile to question whether she ever managed to build a successful identity outside the shadow of her sister, Kate Middleton. The article revisits Pippa’s book deal, short-lived columns and earlier attempts at a public career, framing them as evidence that she never quite escaped comparison with the future queen.

But that framing raises a more interesting question than whether Pippa’s projects succeeded. Why does the British press keep measuring women around Kate against Kate, even when the woman in question is her own sister?

Academically gifted, she won a competitive place to read English at Edinburgh University, where she became friends with George Percy, son of the Duke of Northumberland.

Despite her accomplishments and high-powered connections, Pippa’s attempts to build an identity away from the shadow of her royal sibling seem to have so far, fallen flat.

In 2012 she brought out a book on party planning after securing a £400,000 advance from Penguin. But glossy photographs of Pippa decorating biscuits alongside advice such as sourcing a pumpkin for Halloween failed to shift copies and were widely mocked

For all her cleverness, sources say Pippa has never quite found her voice in public because, as the sister of the future Queen, her actions are closely monitored by the palace. Her younger brother James Middleton, 39, an entrepreneur, once alluded to the restrictions of royalty by association when he said: ‘I really want to promote my company, but I have to be very careful, I can never talk about my sister.’

Daily Mail

The Daily Mail’s treatment of Pippa Middleton here feels like an attempt to manufacture a failure narrative around a woman who largely stepped away from the spotlight.

Yes, her party-planning book was mocked. Yes, her columns did not turn into a decades-long media career. But since when does trying something, discovering it does not work and moving on amount to personal failure? Pippa earned a degree in English literature from Edinburgh and later returned to higher education to complete a master’s degree. She pursued writing, charity work and endurance sports, later completing major fundraising events for the British Heart Foundation. She married James Matthews, had three children and now appears to live a considerably more private life. That does not exactly scream tragedy.

The strangest part is the insistence that she has somehow failed because she never escaped Kate’s “shadow.” Perhaps she was never particularly interested in competing with her sister in the first place.

Royal coverage has a peculiar habit of treating proximity to the monarchy as the ultimate measure of success. By that logic, becoming famous simply because you married the heir is an achievement, while building a comfortable life outside the institution somehow represents falling short.

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Pippa carried Kate’s train down the aisle, yet the Daily Mail still frames her life as a failure because she never escaped her sister’s shadow.

There is also something particularly unpleasant about publishing this sort of retrospective around Pippa’s birthday. It invites readers to measure her against Kate and decide which sister “won,” despite Pippa having spent years keeping her family mostly outside the royal circus.

And perhaps that is precisely why the framing feels so forced. Pippa does not need a palace balcony, endless flattering profiles or a royal title to prove that her life has value. If anything, she seems to have achieved something increasingly rare for someone connected to the Windsors: distance.

She can pursue projects, move on when they do not work, raise her children and keep most of her decisions away from royal drama.

Calling that “living in Catherine’s shadow” says considerably more about how the royal press defines success than it does about Pippa Middleton.

And that raises a bigger question about how parts of the British press cover women around the monarchy. Why does the press so often pit Kate Middleton against other women, even her own sister? Does Kate really need to outshine every woman around her to prove she can become queen?

And if the press insists on making comparisons, why not compare Kate with women who already carry out the role she is expected to have, such as Queen Camilla and other queens consort?