The Wales family has been front and centre in 2025, with Princess Kate officially returning to duty after her cancer diagnosis and recovery.
"The cancer journey is complex, scary and unpredictable for everyone, especially those closest to you," the Princess of Wales announced in a rare health update last year.
"This time has above all reminded William and me to reflect and be grateful for the simple yet important things in life, which so many of us often take for granted. Of simply loving and being loved."
As the Prince and Princess of Wales return to the spotlight, following the news that Kate is in remission, experts have noted that their priorities have changed.
"Before, she used to live her life by the calendar," explained Robert Jobson, author of Catherine, the Princess of Wales: A Biography of the Future Queen. "And now she is living her life, and the calendar comes in after".
This was proven this week as Prince William and Princess Kate took a break from their royal duties to give their children a secret holiday. And after their absence from the 2025 BAFTA Awards over the weekend, it was reported that the family of five had selected the Caribbean as their destination of choice for some much-needed family time.
The Caribbean holds a particularly close place in the royal couple's hearts, specifically Mustique, an island in the Grenadines that Princess Kate has visited since her youth.
And according to her brother James Middleton, the royal couple has such happy memories there that they even had a Caribbean theme at their 2011 wedding after-party, turning the garden at the Goring Hotel into their very own Mustique.
"There, a replica of Basil's Bar in Mustique - a small private island in the Grenadines and a holiday spot the family had visited many times - has been set up," Middleton recalled in his memoir. "Now a perfect facsimile of it has been built in the grounds of the Goring Hotel so wedding guests can imagine themselves on the edge of the Caribbean while actually in the middle of a London garden."
Well, that's lovely.
