Royal engagement coin offers unflattering view of Kate Middleton

Commemorative coin issued by the Royal Mint to mark the royal engagement. 

Kate Middleton has experienced the first harsh reality of her looming royal status – having to endure the unflattering likeness.

As the Royal Mint unveiled its official commemorative £5 coin to mark Prince William's engagement, his bride-to-be may well have wondered who would be walking up the aisleof Westminster Abbey in April.

Rather than a fresh, slim, chisel-nosed Middleton, it seems a heavier, older interloper with the flattened features of a pugilist would be stepping into her bridal shoes.

For while William's profile bears a slight likeness, his fiancee is nigh-on unrecognisable.

The inspiration for the design came, apparently, from photographs of the couple at a sporting event, and had been approved by the Queen and William.

It's long been the Queen's fate to suffer the worst excesses of artistic licence with dignity. Witness her silence at Lucian Freud's robust depiction of her with – to paraphrase one critic – a chin sporting a six-o'clock shadow and a neck like a rugby prop forward.

Prince Philip, predictably, was less diplomatic over the efforts of portrait painter Stuart Pearson Wright, showing him bare-chested, with a bluebottle on one shoulder and seedlings growing out of his index finger. "Gadzooks!" he exclaimed before demanding, "why have you given me a great schonk?"

Justifying the portrayal of Middleton, a Royal Mint spokesman insisted the design had been through a "rigorous approval process". The discouraging news for Middleton is it's just the first of many.

Meanwhile, in her Christmas Day speech tomorrow, the Queen extols the role of sports in building communities, developing social skills and "providing a different perspective on life".

"In the parks of towns and cities and on village greens up and down the country, countless thousands of people every week give up their time to participate in sport and exercise of all sorts, or simply encourage others to do so," she says in an excerpt released by Buckingham Palace.

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