Secret Kate Middleton sighting everyone missed

As the Princess of Wales faces down the biggest crisis of her career, it turns out she’s been out in public a lot more than it first seems.

COMMENT

Things might have changed since the days of George II, the last sovereign to lead troops into battle, but that doesn’t mean that today’s royal family cannot marshall some impressive resources when required. The British Army, Royal Air Force and Royal Navy, the Secret Intelligence Service, the Security Service, GCHQ, military intelligence, and the entire floor staff of Fortnum & Mason: They, theoretically, have all of them at their disposal.

However the forces who have come to Kate the Princess of Wales’ aid as she wades and fights through the greatest crisis of her career are of a different stripe altogether. But, they’re out there. With their Barbour jackets. Their Range Rover Sports. Their golf clubs and their Tuscan holiday villas and their first pressing virgin olive oils and their Grana Padanos.

As the Princess and husband Prince William find themselves having wholly lost any semblance of control and Fleet Street having decided that they can temporarily forget inconvenient notions of privacy and publish shots of off-duty Kate, what has become clear in the last 24 hours is that the couple is not in this fight alone.

The Princess has what sounds like a veritable army looking after her and who has her back during this current fiasco.

It has become clear that Kate Middleton has some secret protectors during her time of need. Picture: Chris Jackson/Getty Images

For weeks now, the Prince and Princess of Wales have struggled under the weight of an ever-rolling, ever-roiling PR catastrophe, which has seen a firestorm of unsubstantiated, deeply damaging, scurrilous claims about the couple hijack social media and the worlds’ prefrontal cortex, and only for Kate to then be lumped in the same basket as North Korea and Iran (I’m not joking) by some of the world’s most trusted news sources.

Then came a seismic development that one day someone shall write songs about.

Last Saturday, UK time, William and Kate were filmed popping into a local Windsor farm shop because even HRHs quite like a fruit loaf of a weekend. The video, showing the peppy couple striding off with laden plastic bags, has since been picked over and mauled by social media users, many of whom are adamant it actually exposes some form of royal chicanery. (It’s another woman, it’s a body double, it’s the second shooter from the grassy knoll. You know, totally reasonable stuff.)

Kate Middleton visiting a local farm shop with Prince William. Picture: MEGA

But let’s leave them to their dribbling, rambling posts and increasingly bananas jabbering because out of this whole situation new details have emerged about what is actually going on inside the Waleses’ “bubble”.

Take for example that Windsor outing, showing the Prince and Princess done up in what can best be described as off-duty, slightly schlubbly style. On that same day, according to the Sun, the couple had previously been off doing their parental bit, cheering from the sidelines as their three young children played sport, thus confirming they fact the same fate as mums and dads everywhere – condemned to spend the start of their weekends stuck on muddy pitches trying to look supportive and not at all desperately wishing they were back under the duvet.

In 2022, the Wales family moved to Adelaide Cottage on the Windsor Home Park and Prince Goerge, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis all started at Lambrook school. That community, it would seem, has rallied to shield the princess during her recuperation from abdominal surgery.

According to the Telegraph’s royal editor Hannah Furness, “The discreet cohort of parents at Lambrook … have not let on how many times they have seen their fellow school mum since her surgery, but it has happened.”

The Prince and Princess of Wales’ “inner circle,” Furness writes, “has remained so loyally silent. Even those on the periphery, at school or sports clubs, have felt enough sympathy with the Princess that nothing has leaked.”

Kate is said to have been doing school drop offs and no one has leaked anything to the press. Picture: AFP

Think about that for a moment: How many of not only Lambrook parents but the parents from the opposing schools playing rugger or hockey or whatever involves knee socks and jolly good mud-flecked sorts must have seen Kate doing her doting mum duty on the sidelines. Not a single one of them has filmed HRH or taken photos of her or in any way sought to profit from footage that would be worth untold sums of money.

Kate, for the last few weeks, has been the most-wanted, the most-hunted person in the world and these parents have not once given into any avaricious or grasping urges.

This protective circle extends beyond the school gates.

Consider also the farm shop trip from another angle too. Based on the footage, the joint was packed and yet only one single person, seated in a parked car, actually whipped out their phone to record this seminal moment. It seems 99.9 per cent of the other people indulging in a lunchtime skinny latte and muffin were either too busy enjoying the streusel topping or were happy to play their part and give Kate the space and privacy she needs right now.

Or take the word of former England cricket captain Kevin Pietersen who probably contravened Elon Musk’s new Twitter rules by posting something sensible on the platform, writing that he sees William and Kate “most days and in the last couple days too!” describing them as “ the most wonderful parents and as normal/humble as they come.’’

Former England cricket captain Kevin Pietersen has seen the royal couple “in the last couple” of days. Picture: X

So there.

Assuming that Kate truthers of X and TikTok are not about to come for Pietersen, what this means is that the princess has not been hermetically sealed away or is being kept prisoner or has met some horrible fate. Maybe, just maybe, the princess is fine and the reason she has not, before now, had surreptitiously snapped photos of her splashed all over the internet is because people can be decent and discreet and kind.

The Princess of Wales might not know their names or trust them to know the code to her wine fridge but it would seem that Kate has a support system, a silent battalion out there.

In all of this, there is another key player – William. Would we be where we are now if the Prince of Wales had not insisted with positively Teutonic stubbornness from the very beginning to guard his wife and to give her the peace, quiet and time off so that she might need to get well?

I know that traditionally dashing princes – or at least striving princes who once had full heads of luscious hair – are meant to fight dragons but this one has spent much of this year guarding his wife against the world.

Going forward, the future Queen’s inner circle will play a key part in Kate’s return to public life, according to the Telegraph’s Furness who writes, “No statement, briefing, or social media post … is [any[ match for people trusting their own ears and eyes.

“As the Princess gets out and about again, word will spread through real life friends and family in a way that the press and palace cannot now do.”

With friends like these … Kate just might be OK, no matter what TikTok’s brightest minds think.

Or to put it another way, Alice bands, assemble.

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.