‘Very weird’: Kate’s two-month disappearance mystifies

A well-known author is the latest person to publicly express their confusion about Kate Middleton’s complete disappearance from public life.

A well-known author is the latest person to publicly express their confusion about Kate Middleton’s complete disappearance from public life in recent months.

The Princess of Wales had abdominal surgery on January 16. Despite the palace’s insistence that the surgery was “planned,” People later reported that the news “came as a surprise” to family friends as well as people who “work closely” with the royals.

The last time the Princess was seen in public was Christmas Day, December 25 last year, when she and husband Prince William took their three children to a church service.

Christmas Day, 2023: The last public sighting of Kate. Picture: Samir Hussein/WireImage

More than two months on, and speculation is rife about where Kate might be, why she’s stayed out of the public eye for so long, and why exactly she needed this mysterious surgery.

Rachel Hawkins, a prolific author whose output includes several royal-themed books of fiction, spoke out about Kate’s disappearance on social media yesterday.

Prefacing her tweets by saying she does “not want to speculate about a woman’s health online,” she nonetheless noted that she “spent years eyeball deep in Weird Royal Research for the Royals books, and everything that is happening with Kate M is indeed very, very weird. Unprecedented, even.

“We’re at 2 months since anyone has seen her. We’re not even getting milquetost, ‘I appreciate the well wishes,’ statements from her (note that we HAVE gotten solo statements from William under his personal standard. Anything about her has been under the joint PoW banner.)” she wrote.

The Princess of Wales and her children do charity work on December 12. Picture: Kensington Palace/Youtube

Indeed, Kate’s health crisis has coincided with that of the most senior royal King Charles, who recently underwent surgery for an enlarged prostate, and was later diagnosed with cancer. He has issued several messages to the public, thanking them for their support during his ill health.

Hawkins continued that, while she didn’t think Kate’s disappearance from public life was due to “anything super nefarious,” it is “absolutely BIG TIME WEIRD.”

She called Middleton’s health issue “very mishandled all the way around from a PR standpoint, and also pretty striking that apparently you CAN tell the British press to stand down and they will if the princess you’re trying to protect isn’t Black,” she wrote, a reference to Kate’s sister-in-law Meghan Markle.

In contrast, King Charles - pictured here on February 23 reading get well soon cards - has kept the public updated as he deals with a cancer diagnosis. Picture: Jonathan Brady - Pool/Getty

As others chimed in to the thread to offer their two cents, one theorised that Middleton’s illness must involve “something where they can’t risk people seeing her or her being somewhere she can’t be managed. Because there’s just no way that they wouldn’t have released pictures or had her pose or something by now.”

Hawkins agreed. “That’s all I can think. It would be so easy to do the softest of softball photo ops/statements, and they’re just … not. And Charles IS doing that kind of thing, so the contrast is striking,” she wrote.

News.com.au’s royal expert Daniela Elser suggested this week that we might expect to see Kate return to public duties by April 17, when her children will go back to school after the Easter break.

If we don’t see her until then, her break from public life will have stretched to almost four months - as Hawkins said, a truly “unprecedented” absence for a senior royal.