Catherine, Princess of Wales Visits Salisbury Plain Training Area in Wiltshire

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Princess Cathy became Soldier Girl Cathy for the day! The Princess of Wales visited the Irish Guards for a day of training exercises for the first time since becoming Colonel, having taken over the role from William, who is now Colonel of the Welsh Guards.

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Obviously, there’s no fashion critique here, although we are kind of amused that she got a chance to wear her beloved skinny jeans. As much as we tend to focus nearly exclusively on the fashion side of the royals, something a lot of Americans tend to forget is that they also have deep and important ties to military and religious life. It’s a part of the role that Catherine’s going to be taking on more and more in the near future and it will be interesting to see not only how she navigates it, but how the public will respond to it. With Harry and Andrew out of the picture and most of the senior members of the family being literally seniors, it just makes good sense to get Catherine into roles and situations like this as often and as early as possible. Neither Diana nor Camilla would’ve handled this sort of thing all that well as Princess of Wales, but Cathy is actually pretty well suited for it. Of course like a great deal (but not all) of the royal family’s military duties, it’s little more than LARPing, but images like these have real power and they tend to be far better PR for the family than a lot of those grandiose and somewhat silly dress uniforms they often wear.

[Photo Credit: PA Images/INSTARimages.com/Cover Images]

• Catherine Duchess of Cambridge
• Catherine Princess of Wales
• Kate Middleton
• Royal Watch