Kate Called an Outing With Harry and Meghan Last Year "One of the Hardest Things" She's Ever Done

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Putting on a perfect royal game face is no easy task—even for a pro like Kate Middleton. Craving a specific example? The (now/possibly forever former 💔) Fab Four's intensely-photographed and even-more-intensely scrutinized walkabout following Queen Elizabeth's death last fall apparently took *quite* a toll on Kate.

In his new book, Our King, royal correspondent and author Robert Jobson reveals, among other things, that the new Princess of Wales was acutely aware of the "ill feeling" between her and her husband, Prince William, and her infamously-estranged in-laws, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, during the extremely public outing in Windsor last September.

"Catherine later admitted to a senior royal that, such was the ill feeling between the two couples, the joint walkabout was one of the hardest things she’d ever had to do,” Jobson writes in the new book (per the Daily Mail).

When the couples stepped out for the joint walkabout, a lot of royal fans thought it might have been the first hint that they were repairing their long-strained relationships with each other, thanks in large part to pictures (like the one below) that seemed to suggest they were on good (or at least better) terms and generally enjoying (or pleasantly tolerating) each other's company.

According to Jobson, however, that "things are getting better between us" appearance was just an "illusion" and things were actually still tense AF between the couples (at least according to royal sources who confided in him for the book).

FWIW, body language experts were calling this back when the walkabout went down.

"This 'reunion' looked like an intentional gesture rather than a signal that the Fab Four were somehow back on track," Judi James, an expert frequently-tapped to analyze royal body language, told The Sun at the time. "The body language story that underlined this appearance suggested little more than a desire to do the right, adult thing to respect both their grandmother and their father, the new King."

And Kate's body language during the outing was specifically called out as, well, indicating she felt pretty much exactly the way Jobson describes in his book.

"As the four stood face to face at the end of the outing, both Meghan and Kate sucked their lips in rather than smiling at each other and each other’s husbands," James added. "Kate pulled back so far that William put an arm out to pull her towards Harry and Meghan for the final line-up pose."

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