Kate Middleton’s nightmare return to work

The Princess of Wales will reappear in public after her mystery illness but a double nightmare lays in her wake.

COMMENT

T.S. Eliot, in that cheery bedtime read The Wasteland, calls April “the cruellest month”. For further confirmation let’s just ask Kate the Princess of Wales and woman set to return to work in, when else, but April.

The date when the 42-year-old will most likely get back to her day job has now become clear and what awaits her sounds like hell. Toasty, sulfurous hell.

As we all know, Kate has been Off with a capital ‘O’ since 2023, not seen since the royal family braved the chill on December 25 to walk to church betwixt masses of hardcore royal fans armed with 2004 digital cameras and petrol station forecourt flowers.

Kate has been Off with a capital ‘O’ since 2023. Picture: Glyn Kirk / AFP

In January, right about the time that the working members of the royal family usually return to deal with their overflowing inboxes and 901 requests from the Huddersfield donkey rescue charities, Kensington Palace announced that the princess was undergoing planned abdominal surgery and on sick leave.

Two weeks later, in an operation that owed more than a tad to Le Carre at his crafty best, dutiful husband Prince William managed to secretly ferry her home to Adelaide Cottage at Windsor, where she has been since and continues to recuperate. Think less salad days and more trackie days …

The date when the 42-year-old will most likely get back to her day job has now become clear and what awaits her sounds like hell. Picture: Henry Nicholls / AFP

But work comes for us all, even princesses, and it seems likely that she will be back at the busy task of helping keep the monarchy afloat by April 17. (That’s when the Wales kids will go back to school after the Easter break.)

However what faces Kate in the weeks that will follow is shaping up to be a Trial by Spares. (Note to self: reality show to pitch to Netflix?)

Reason number one why the Princess is truly in for it is thanks to the human appendage of the House of Windsor (that useless, dangly appendage that no one really needs around), Prince Andrew the Duke of York.

Andrew, since November 2019 has been stuck in the royal family’s naughty corner thanks to his lengthy friendship with sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, with nothing to do all day but play golf and refuse to think about what he’s done. (Which is to say nothing of his other doings such as having a rolodex of central Asian tyrants and taking all those lovely jubbly trips to meet with former dictator Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. Or that he thought it was just fine and dandy to invite a Libyan gun runner to Buckingham Palace. Or that his Pitch@Palace project, which was all about helping start-ups, somehow managed to make $2.3m profits itself.)

Anyhoo, the honchos at Netflix (taking a break from waiting for Harry and Meghan to come up with some new show ideas that weren’t worthy cartoons or docos about endangered snow owls) have made a nice new shiny movie about Andrew and his 2019 on-camera TV downfall.

The Princess is truly in for it thanks to the human appendage of the House of Windsor, Prince Andrew. Picture: Stephen Pond/Getty Images

Scoop is based on the book of the same name by Sam McCallister, who was the producer who somehow managed to get Andrew to agree to the sit-down. Starring Gillian Anderson, Rufus Sewell and Billie Piper, the trailer makes the production look glossy, high-end and gripping.

What this means is that just as the Andrew disaster is slowly beginning to recede from the forefront of public memory, BLAMO! Here comes Netflix to vividly, compellingly revive one of the most sordid, tawdry and gross chapters in modern royal history.

In turn, this means that just as Kate is trying to remember her work email password (‘Willy4eva’?) the world’s biggest streamer will be busy reminding everyone that Buckingham Palace protected, for nearly a decade, a duke who merrily tootled off to New York to have a nice jolly holiday with a convicted sex offender.

A duke who then went on the telly and called himself “too honourable” to dump Epstein by the phone, a self-interested, self-pitying turnip of a man who exquisitely personified all the bloated egoism, pomposity and bilious self-interest of the nobility.

Harry and Meghan might be complicated, controversial figures but Andrew? The sooner Charles punts him off to tend some lighthouse on a remote promontory in a part of Scotland so outlying it doesn’t even have sheep, the better.

Harry and Meghan might be complicated, controversial figures but Andrew is on another level. Picture: Andrew Chin/Getty Images

Then, in May comes another ghost of princes past; the return of Harry to the frosty embrace of a largely nonplussed nation. According to the Times, the duke is “expected” to fly to join a service at St Paul’s Cathedral to mark the 10th anniversary of the hugely successful Invictus Games.

Harry might have long lost the balance of public approval on home soil (he is currently sitting on a net favourability of -35 points) but every time he has landed back in Blighty all cameras, all attention, and most of the headlines follow him.

While it’s not known how long or short this May trip might be, based on the Duke of Sussex’s four trips back to the UK last year it’s likely to be a quickie. Think, double digit hours.

Still, from the perspective of the Waleses (and King Charles) even this fleeting reappearance will be highly disruptive to them trying to get back to business as usual after months of health woes and the press having to stand outside London hospitals.

After not only Kate’s surgery but Charles’s enlarged prostate situation and then the discovery he has cancer and now His Majesty undergoing treatment, so far 2024 has been a discombobulating, rocky year.

So far 2024 has been a discombobulating, rocky year.

What the Crown Inc so badly needs come April 17 is a nice return to normal programming, say Kate beaming at cuddly babies or trying her giggling keen bean hand at macramé or Zumba with a bemused William looking on or them undertaking a nice overseas trip so we can see some nice dresses in some nice photos in nice locations. (They had been slated to go to Italy for an official trip about now. Let us mourn the ‘dolce vita’ punning headlines Fleet Street had ready.)

But no. Kate’s first weeks back on the royal clock will see the return of Spare and Sparer to the royal main stage and the reanimation of the two most damaging chapters to the greater project of the monarchy since the abdication of Edward VIII.

Kate’s first weeks back on the royal clock will see the return of Spare and Sparer to the royal main stage. Picture: Daniel Leal / AFP

Not only will she have to plough through her 9876 unread emails, a good proportion Peter Jones catalogues; not only will Kensington Palace likely have a punishing schedule of public engagements for her after the months-long Kate drought; and not only will she be expected to make up for lost PR time, the Princess of Wales will be going up against a backdrop of Andrew and Harry and their attendant baggage roaring back to the fore.

Merde.

Enjoy the sofa Kate. Enjoy the down time and the sleep and the convalescing and William’s attempt at making chicken soup (‘Blythers! Where’s my investiture sword? These carrots are deuced hard to dice’). The next bit is going to be seriously bumpy.

Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.