invective against her.”
Mantel also said that there remains a fixation on the bodies of royal women, one that has existed for
centuries.
“We only have to look at what happens when our royal ladies give birth,” Mantel said. “They are perceived
as public property in the same way that Tudor women were perceived. It is simply turning the individual
woman back into a breeder.”
The author, who is about to publish the final part of her trilogy of works devoted to the life of Thomas
Cromwell, previously condemned the perception of Kate Middleton in the tabloid press.
She suggested in 2013 that Middleton’s public image was “designed by a committee and built by craftsmen,
with a perfect plastic smile and the spindles of her limbs hand-turned and gloss-varnished”.
Markle and her husband Prince Harry are to step down from their roles as senior royals on 31 March.