Co-ordinating outfits and identikit nude shoes. What this picture tells us about a Royal Family that's finally at ease with itself

When Kate was wavering over wearing a tiara (as opposed to flowers) at her wedding, it was Camilla who rang mutual friends to get them to persuade her to go with the tiara.

Although Kate can be a fashion plate, the two women have more in common that you might think.

They are outdoorsy types with an interest in dogs, children and the arts, who are utterly devoted to their men.

 They can do charity roles with buckets of charm but are probably happiest at home relaxing in front of a box set of Danish TV series The Killing; in Kate’s case in her Anglesey farmhouse, and in Camilla’s at Highgrove.

 So what of Sophie Wessex, the third happy member of this glamorous new gang? She too seems to have been transformed by the arrival of Kate, and has completed her own cycle of rehabilitation.

She and Camilla have horsiness in common — Sophie loves to ride with her children and the Queen.

But like Camilla, her new acceptance within the magic circle has been reflected in her personal style.

It has been noted that since Kate’s arrival on the scene, Sophie has hired a personal trainer and traded up from appropriate to elegant.

 There was a skirmish with negative publicity before her wedding to Prince Edward in 1999, when pictures emerged of Chris Tarrant pulling up her bikini top.

(She had been a publicist for Capital Radio where he was a DJ).

Once that hiccup had passed she decided to continue her career as a public relations executive as she was keen to continue to make her own way in the world.

The company she owned with her business partner and right-hand man, Murray Harkin, won lots of accounts and did a brisk trade.

Harkin said that although ‘figure-blind’ she was excellent at sales and pitching.

Then Sophie met the now-defunct News of the World’s ‘Fake Sheikh’, and embarrassed everyone by being rude about William Hague and Cherie Blair, and worse, being seen to trade on her royal connections.

She resigned from her own company, and three years ago the business was wound up with a fairly monumental £1.7 million of debt.

 Despite this, Sophie had already worked her way into the Queen’s affections.

She battled hard to have her two children, eight-year-old Lady Louise, who has exotropia (when one eye looks outwards) and her younger brother James, Viscount Severn, four, who was conceived naturally after several bouts of IVF and one ectopic pregnancy.

Her quiet strength, plus — oddly — a shared interest in military history saw her become a favourite of the Queen in those lean years when HM no longer had Fergie to cheer her up (they got on surprisingly well), couldn’t bear to befriend Camilla and William was still unmarried.

Sophie may not have been a natural entrepreneur, but she had been a natural PR girl.

She was friendly and chatty and genuinely interested in people.

Even the potentially politically-explosive trip to Gibraltar that she and Edward made on behalf of the Queen earlier this month passed uneventfully — partly because Sophie has learned her lesson.

Now she never puts a foot wrong, or says anything tactless.

She smiles at local children and makes happy small talk in pretty dresses.

The only black mark against her in recent times has been a certain surprise around the staggering presents she accepted from the despotic King of Bahrain: two ‘suites’ of highly expensive jewellery.

But as such gifts do not belong officially to the recipient and usually end up as part of the Royal Collection, it is unlikely that the Queen would be irritated.

After all, she welcomed the King of Bahrain to her Jubilee lunch for monarchs at Windsor.

For all three royal women, it has been a slow, sometimes painful path to today’s good cheer.

Waity Katie had to sit out patiently the joyless years when William hadn’t decided to propose, and endure that very public split.

Sophie saw her professional life collapse around her to the embarrassment of her in-laws.

And Camilla was, for years, simply the ‘other woman’ who had done so much damage to the monarchy.

Now their various tribulations have turned to triumph. No wonder they all look so perky.