https://proudstars.blogspot.com/2016/01/how-sophie-wessex-has-risen-to-become.html
How Sophie Wessex has risen to become the Queen's favorite in-law... leading to chilly relations with Kate
For the first time since she married Prince Edward in 1999, Sophie (left, with Kate, and right, with the Queen) has been able to feel completely free at last from the ludicrous millstone - which she hated - of being talked up as the apparent natural successor to Princess Diana. In addition, the excitement of a second child for the Duchess of Cambridge has helped push Sophie, also a mother of two, even more to the margins of public life and inevitable scrutiny. Some royal figures might have viewed this as a crisis - but for Sophie, according to a close friend, it was 'positively liberating'. For Sophie, who got things so badly wrong while still working in public relations when she joined the Royal Family, is these days viewed by the Queen as its safest pair of hands.
