As someone who actually likes Mary quite a bit, I have read this thread with some interest. I am a woman roughly the same age as she is, and reading your comments have come to think that quite a few of those writing must still be quite young and with not a very good comprehension of how it is like to be a 30-something woman.
Here it is: yes, we have had boyfriends and even sex. We have gone to bars and danced barefoot on the tables to crap 80s pop. We have made too many things to count we shouldn't have done, and a have a few regrets. And at this age, we have already a very good sense of how our lives will shape themselves, and sometimes find that scary. We look back to our 20 yo selves and both envy that idealism and wish we could tell ourselves that live isn't going to be what we assume it will be, that idealism has a short shelflife and often ambition comes before fall.
Yes, Mary didn't have a big illustrious career to leave behind - but how many woman at the age of 30 has? I know maybe couple such girls in Finland, the rest still struggle in a limbo of studies and bad jobs, boyfriends and roommates, no matter what their ambitions may have been. But you can hardly accuse Mary for lacking effort - she does after all have two university degrees; she took courses like creative writing, and was very much into self-development. How some people actually manage to make that sound like a bad thing is beyond me. Of course I admire all the Letizias of this world, all those who knew from the beginning who they are and what they want to do; that they give it all up to walk two steps behind a man - no matter who he is - is well beyond me.
Sometimes even determination isn't enough - a lot in life comes down to basic good luck, making the right connections, finding the right jilly job that leads to big things, being at right place at the right time. Yes, many of us have by now watched our male colleagues to get promoted past us - yes, it still happens, every day; most of the guys I know are in steady jobs already while the girls are still looking. Yes, she may have changed jobs many times, but so have many other women done too, for too many reasons to account here. I am starting to get a hang of what I want to spend my life doing only now and can identify with her in that sense perfectly well.
Somehow I also believe that if Frederick was merely a math teacher, she would have still married him - would Maxima have even touched W-A if he was just an ordinary guy, with ordinary job and no big money? We cannot know, and we cannot know about Mary for sure either. I like to think though that those two love each other and make a good couple - as do Maxima and W-A and even Philippe and Mathilde.
And yes, she holds her head high. But with you people howling at her, of course she does. Most of even us normal folks are very sensitive to criticism and when knowing that people are watching and commenting everything, every mistake, every lapse, which one of us wouldn't be wary and reserved? For her, the pressure of always making the best possible impression is even stronger, and so she is probably twice the more worried.
Is she a good role model? Definitely much better than most of those celebrities little girls usually admire. She is in every sense an ordinary girl. She doesn't come from old money/old name like Mathilde, not from powerful connections like Maxima, not from the top social circles like Letizia or Mette-Marit or Maria Teresa of Luxembourg. She was just a pretty girl who got lucky. She may not have beeen the most accomplished or ambitious person in the world, but I still find her admirable, simply for what she is.
There are a great many royals I find annoying and undeserving. Royals I have no particular respect for. I have chosen to not to pay much attention to them, as I can live my life very well without them. But I would never make a sport out of trashing them just simply because someone else likes them. That doesn't, after all, diminish those royals one bit but simply hurts the people who genuinely like and admire them. Now, kindly take your vitamin and get over it.
