If you are or have ever been married, you know the power of the mother-in-law. You are now in-charge of her baby and, in her mind, there's no possible way you are capable of doing a grand a job as she did. It doesn't matter if you've won the Nobel Prize, achieved sainthood or discovered a cure for cancer.
The first time my mother-in-law came to visit, I cleaned as though Jesus, Mary and Joseph were travelling with her. I planned meals and tested so many recipes I made Martha Stewart look like a slacker. I became obsessed with locating dust bunnies and their subsequent obliteration. I was sure she was intent on white-gloving my house and I desperately wanted to pass inspection. Was it my mother-in-law coming or General Eisenhower?
But what happens if your mother-in-law was a fashion icon, internationally beloved, who died tragically at a young age? The media will remind you of her every twelve seconds. They will show a myriad of photos of her and make endless comparisons -- how you have a similar sense of style, how affable you are, how you put one foot in front of the other and on and on until it borders on creepy and slightly Oedipal. What with the intense media coverage, I'm surprised no one brought in Dr. Phil to discuss whether or not William was marrying a ringer for his mom. Poor taste? Probably.
Kate, the new duchess of somewhere, is on the cover of a news weekly out and about with a computer-aged Diana at 50. I feel for Kate. Whether digitally enhanced or hundreds of hours of archival footage, the newlywed has the mother of all mother-in-law issues -- living in the grandest of royal shadows.
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