I have genuinely enjoyed all of the conspiracies about the current People Magazine cover story, “The Making of a Queen: How Kate is shaping her role for the modern world and modeling herself on the reigning queen.” Incidentally, both of those things can’t be true at once. Kate can’t “shape her role for the modern world” AND “model herself” on QEII, a 96-year-old woman who wishes it was still 1953. As I said, I’ve enjoyed the conspiracies about why People put Kate on the cover and the timing of it and what it says about the Cambridge marriage. The thing I wish people would remember is that Kate isn’t actually capable of playing four-dimensional chess. Her PR is so simplistic, it’s actually kind of funny. This People cover story was meant as nothing more than sugary keenery about how Kate is perfect and “just like the Queen.” Now, I do think the timing is interesting. This cover came out immediately following the blind item about William’s alleged sexual proclivities and the persistent rumors of Will and Kate’s separation.

Anyway, People Mag continues to release the cover story in drips and drabs, which is why I almost missed this hilarious excerpt. Apparently, Kate needs to remind everyone that she’s super-duper prepared for all of her meetings, and the Queen treats her like a prime minister!!! LMAO.

Kate Middleton is well-prepped for her royal role. The Duchess of Cambridge has had a lifetime to learn from Queen Elizabeth — first as a subject from afar, then as a member of the royal family for 11 years.

Although her roots aren’t royal (as the oldest of three children of entrepreneur parents, she grew up in an affluent but not aristocratic family), her instincts are —including a natural affinity for connecting with the public. Kate, like the Queen, is “able to make each person feel that they are being seen for the three seconds she talks to them,” author and historian Amanda Foreman, author of Queen Victoria’s Buckingham Palace, tells PEOPLE in this week’s cover story. This quality, adds Foreman, “projects immediacy and makes it feel intimate, which is amazing — there are people who simply can’t do that. It is training plus innate talent.”

And diligent preparation. “Catherine always does her homework and doesn’t go on visits on a wing and a prayer,” says an insider. “She has read the papers and puts in the effort. She is a hardworking person.”

As patron of a number of charitable organizations, Kate stays informed on key projects and initiatives and spotlights their work through her various engagements. Kate is also a modern woman who is nonetheless amenable to the centuries-old power structure of the family business.

“It’s a personal willingness to conform to the requirements of the institution,” says historian Sarah Gristwood, author of Elizabeth: Queen and Crown. “That sounds like an unappealing, unglamorous virtue, but it’s an important one if you’re going to be a successful cog in the royal wheel.”

Not one to hand down explicit “lessons,” it’s unlikely the Queen has ever formally tutored Kate. Instead, Gristwood tells PEOPLE that the Queen may have approached her relationship with Kate the way she does with prime ministers.

“The Queen has always preferred to do rather than to say,” Gristwood says. Adds the Queen’s biographer Sally Bedell Smith: “Catherine has learned by observing. She knows what resonates. She will have absorbed a lot from this Queen.”

[From People]

So, what is Kate and the Middleton PR machinery actually trying to tell us? They’re trying to tell us that Kate is in it for the long haul, that she’s not going to be thrown over for any of William’s side chicks, that Kate will be Queen even if she has to peg grind away, day and night. to make it work. Plus, there’s the heavy emphasis on Kate pretending to be “credible” and “smart,” which is something that’s come up a lot in recent years. I dare say that it would be difficult to find a woman more incurious, less intellectual or more ill-suited to the role of Queen Consort, but the Middleton PR demands that everyone see Kate as some kind of deep thinker who has binders full of data and pie charts. Please. I’ve seen the “work” handed to Kate and she should be embarrassed. The fact that she thinks she’s pulling off this charade should tell you how deeply unserious she is.

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