New theory about Princess Kate engagement ring mystery
Over the last year the Princess of Wales’ famous engagement ring has disappeared and then reappeared, repeatedly.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah we get it. The perks of being a member of the royal family are hard to miss – the castles, the diamonds the size of Minties, the never having to scrub your own grout or remember to take the green bin out.
But let’s talk about the downsides like the nearly unthinkable degree of surveillance: It made international news in 2016 and again in 2018 when Kate, The Princess of Wales appeared in public wearing small, discrete bandaids on her fingers. Not even the US president faces such an extreme sort of bodily scrutiny.
In the same vein is Ringgate, possibly the greatest royal mystery since the princes in the tower and why no one has exiled Prince Andrew to a shed on the Isle of Wight yet.
Why does the Princess of Wales’ iconic engagement ring keep disappearing from her left hand?
Why has, in the six months since she announced she was in remission for cancer, has it appeared and then vanished only for it to miraculously turn up again? It’s there and it’s gone and it’s there again and then, wouldn’t you know, it it’s gone …
Last year, everything changed for the royal family, including the ring situation.
Until 2024, the Cabrurary’s cream egg-sized sapphire number was all but welded onto her finger, only coming off on rare occasions such as for hygiene reasons when she visited a
hospital.
All of that changed – queue the thunder clap sound effects – in March last year with the internet having gotten their collective knickers in a colossal twist over the princess having been MIA for much of the year. Were she and Prince William divorcing? Was she locked in some remote castle after trying to do a runner? Had she simply gotten the pip with having to pretend to like going to the Windsor Horse Show?
Then on Mother’s Day, March 10, the Kensington Palace social media accounts attempted to hose things down by releasing a charming shot of her with her three kids, taken by William.
Only rather than quelling the madness, the world immediately noticed that, in the photo, the princess was not wearing either her engagement or wedding rings, sending social media into a true meltdown with fringe, extreme theories about the Waleses’ marriage soon circulating. (Making this omnishambles even worse – the world’s major photo agencies issued global kill notices for the shot given how shoddily Kate had tweaked it in Photoshop.)
Less than two weeks later, on March 22, the mother-of-three told the world that she had cancer, her ring firmly on her hand again and prominently visible in the video.
The next great development in this Wagnerian ring cycle came in August 2024 when the princess debuted a new diamond and sapphire eternity band which echoed her engagement ring.
Well done @TeamGB, what an incredible journey!
— The Prince and Princess of Wales (@KensingtonRoyal) August 11, 2024
Every athlete showed immense dedication, heart and passion. You made us all so proud!
Here's to celebrating every triumph at @Paris2024 and looking forward to more from @ParalympicsGB later in the summer 🇬🇧🥇 pic.twitter.com/oCLz7HuuLG
When, in September, Kate revealed that she was in remission, the attendant video included a number of shots very clearly showing her left hand – and the absence of her engagement ring. Again.
In the artsy, professionally shot video, the Princess of Wales could be seen wearing her new sapphire and diamond eternity number, her Welsh gold wedding band, a diamond eternity band she has had for years and what looked to be another simple ring too.
Even so, things have never resumed to normal engagement ring programming.
In January it was on her hand during a visit to Wales; in February during a visit to Wales it was off.
In February it failed to materialise when she visited a prison and took a bunch of preschoolers to the National Portrait Gallery by minibus.
The next time Kate turned up in public in March, again in Wales, the ring was there and then again for the Commonwealth Day service at Westminster Abbey. It vanished the same when the 43-year-old went to the Six Nations rugby with William only for it to reappear two days later when at St. Patrick’s Day Parade at Wellington Barracks.
Anyone else dizzy?
This whole thing might come down to something as simple and boring as comfort. Kate’s engagement ring is stunning but would have to be somewhat unwieldy to wear day in and day out when trying to wrestle Prince Louis into his PE kit or stuffing a pheasant for supper.
Then again, the princess wore the bleeding thing pretty much non stop for more than 13 years without it seeming to bother her so I’m not quite sure if this theory stands up.
Another possibility might be, the symbolism and all that.
Back in 2010, it proved to be a controversial decision when William proposed to his ever- patient other half with his mother’s ring, a piece forever associated with the world’s most famously miserable marriage and freighted with Diana’s memory and legacy. Was the
prince’s choice a touching bit of sentimentality or like christening a yacht with a bottle of champagne that had sailed on the Titanic?
No matter because the Waleses’ ship has only sailed on and on, no matter the seas, and
through triter sentences than this.
Which leads us to another idea. Might Kate’s new sapphire and diamond band, which seems to often wear in place of Diana’s ring, carry with it its own meaning? A ring from her husband, purely for her and hers alone? A piece that stands for their enduring, through sickness and health (and for richer and richer) union?
Sadly, we will never get any sort of even vague answer given the Palace would comment on this when pigs take to the air or Prince Andrew learns how to spell ‘humility’ (or ‘regret’), whichever comes first.
Still there is something else we can draw from Ringgate, which is, Kate’s gonna do what Kate’s gonna do. For years after her marriage the princess rigidly clung onto standard royal operating procedure with a death-like grip, barely issuing a peep that had not been signed off in triplicate and pre-scripted; her wardrobe best described as ‘Conservative Party MP’s wife’, everything so prim and starchy Margaret Thatcher would have approved. Yawn.
So much has changed over the last five years and even more so since the death of the late Queen and her elevation to the Princess of Wales title. Kate now has pairs of tidy working trousers for days, her very own Royal Foundation and is pursuing the most ambitious charitable agenda of any princess (or Queen) in British history.
It would make perfect sense if that confidence and assuredness extended to her no longer giving two figs about whether such minor choices as her rings were getting the internet or the press (cough) into a lather.
Maybe that new sapphire and diamond eternity band signifies not just a relationship that has endured but also a woman who has come into her own and is now forging her own path. (And so the background music swells …) And maybe, when Kate does become Queen, she will make it her very own in ways that make my feminist heart trill a bit. I bet Diana would approve.
Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and commentator with more than 15 years’ experience
working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.
Originally published as New theory about Princess Kate engagement ring mystery
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