Where is Kate? The royal family attracts more speculation by the day
While the King hosted friends and met world leaders, the Palace’s reluctance to comment on the Princess of Wales’s condition has created a rising sense of panic.
One of America’s most popular TV comedy programs was asking the question that had captured the nation. It was not about the Super Tuesday primary contests ahead of the US elections, or the State of the Union address, which elicited an exaggerated yawn from the presenter. Instead, The Daily Show’s Ronny Chieng turned to look straight into the camera to ask: “Where is Kate Middleton? Where are you, Kate?”
There was no rush to provide reassurance from the Prince of Wales, who appeared to begin his working week on Friday with a visit to the Oval cricket ground for his Earthshot environmental campaign. Aides said that William had been busy – just not in a way that was visible to the public.
The King was doing the opposite. Away from public duties on doctors’ orders while he undergoes cancer treatment, he had been expected to take this week off. Despite being told to “slow down” by the Queen, who took her own advice and flew to sunnier climes for a few days of relaxation, the King was ramping up.
He was photographed meeting world leaders and ambassadors from his living room at Buckingham Palace. He hosted friends for afternoon tea and dinner. He insisted on the “more public” option of travelling between Buckingham Palace and his more comfortable quarters at Clarence House in the state Bentley, so he could “be seen”.
Quite what the Queen made of it all from her sun lounger is anyone’s guess, but there are those in the palace who have an idea.
The Princess of Wales, who is recuperating from abdominal surgery, was not supposed to be seen at all. It didn’t quite go to plan. Two images of Kate emerged which served to alarm and enrage Kensington Palace for different reasons. The first was a paparazzi shot of the princess being driven around by her mother, Carole Middleton, which, having been sold to popular American news and gossip websites, promptly went viral.
A second, more innocuous image showed Kate in her role as the Colonel of the Irish Guards on a Ministry of Defence website. The Palace brought in the big guns to shoot it down. The army’s offence? Not the picture per se, but the mere fact that it had the temerity to suggest that Kate would be attending a troops review on June 8.
No matter that the date was nearly ten weeks after her anticipated Easter return to duties. The problem appeared to be that Kensington Palace must be allowed to control when and how it makes such announcements, not an organisation as insignificant as the British Army. The ministry duly removed any reference of the princess while she is missing from action.
Over in the US, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex are not going quietly. In this week’s budget, the chancellor confirmed that the British government would bid £26 million to host Harry’s Invictus Games in the UK, while Meghan is reportedly looking to wage a PR operation in the country to improve their image.
Welcome to the kind of week that is quickly becoming the new normal for the Windsors, a royal family that appears to attract more rumour and speculation by the day.
What started as internet chatter about Kate’s “disappearance” from public life has tipped over into the mainstream media, triggered in part by William’s no-show at a memorial for his Greek godfather, the late King Constantine II, last week. The BBC has called it “a royal dilemma”, The New York Times described “feverish speculation” about Kate’s condition and the LA Times appeared to go one better with a piece about the “frenzy over Kate Middleton’s ‘disappearance’ ”.
Spain’s El Pais ran a headline which read: “Scant information on the health of Charles III and Kate Middleton, who was seen in a photograph Monday, raises more questions than answers.”
In tabloid magazines in Germany, wild conjecture ranged from Kate being the victim of a domestic abuse attack to being pregnant with twins.
Palace aides enacting the strategy of “never complain, never explain” remained undeterred.
In January Kensington Palace announced that Kate had been admitted to hospital for planned abdominal surgery. While the precise nature of her condition was unknown, there was a plea for privacy and guidance that she would not return to public duties before Easter.
Since then, the royal silence has only been punctuated with the occasional murmurings from the Palace that the princess is “doing well” and a handful of public engagements for William.
Kensington Palace has appealed to journalists for calm amid what they have noted is a rising sense of panic about the princess’s condition.
The question being weighed up within the palace, insiders say, is how the princess will feel when she looks back on this period from a future vantage point and whether she will think “I wish I had put a picture out” or whether, if she does release a picture, she will have the regret of thinking “I wish I had prioritised my recovery”.
“The guidance hasn’t changed,” a Kensington Palace source said. “We made it clear that the princess would be unlikely to return before Easter and that’s what’s happening.” They added that William was “more focused on his work than on social media”. Yet people are beginning to ask if there is a disconnect between the type of work he feels he ought to do and that which is expected of him by the public?
Palace insiders say that his view of the monarchy does not require him to be cutting ribbons up and down the country.
The late Queen knew that as a member of the royal family you “have to be seen to be believed”. Never has the mantra been more true than in the age of social media, where the vacuum is filled by online platforms where unnamed users can publish all sorts of lurid rumours. However, Palace sources say that William is keen to forge “a new way” that focuses on fewer public engagements that have more “impact”. His recent intervention in the Middle East conflict certainly did just that. He spoke to aid workers providing humanitarian assistance in Gaza and visited a synagogue to hear about rising antisemitism in Britain. Yet it was his strongly-worded statement that caused the biggest headlines.
William was at the Oval on Friday to meet representatives from Notpla, who have just secured a deal to provide 50 sporting venues with non-plastic, fully compostable fast food packaging with a seaweed coating. On Monday, William will be launching an online platform where winners of his conservation prize can be matched with philanthropists looking to invest in green projects.
There is a personal benefit to William’s less-is-more approach, too. He can be free for the school runs, help with homework and, in doing so, secure the general wellbeing of the line of succession.
Not constantly whizzing around the country frees William up to focus on his young family, which remains his priority. For the truth, according to those who know him best, is that he is reluctant to be King, in the short term at least. He realises that any sense of freedom that he now enjoys will be hugely curtailed by matters of state once he ascends to the throne.
A Palace insider said: “Everyone is hoping that we are many years away from a new reign. William, in particular, knows that his life will change utterly when that happens.”
There is also said to be an interesting element weighing heavily on William’s mind: the trauma of losing his mother.
William, who has said that he thinks about his mother every day, has heeded the lessons that a packed schedule of public duties can have on a Prince and Princess of Wales who are also trying to raise young children.
As a result, the couple are fiercely protective over their privacy as a family. It means William does not feel he owes the public an explanation when, for example, he doesn’t attend a public function. A “personal matter” is explanation enough, he feels.
However, there was also an important lesson that the late Queen learnt from Diana, too. It’s one that some in royal circles think ought not to be ignored.
After her sudden death in August 1997, the Palace was bewildered by the huge public outpouring of grief. The Queen, keen to protect her family’s privacy and focus on her two grandsons, remained silent. Five days passed before she addressed the nation, saying: “I for one believe there are lessons to be drawn from her life and from the extraordinary and moving reaction to her death.”
Now there is a new Queen, and although she was the stepmother Diana warned them against, William is said to be supportive.
Any suggestion that he has had his nose put out of joint by having to play second fiddle to the woman now known as Her Majesty is “nonsense”, according to Palace aides.
William and Camilla speak regularly on the phone, they insist, often at the weekend. And they will be seen putting on a united front when they appear together at Monday’s Commonwealth Day service.
They will be joined by a virtual King. While Charles is no longer appearing in public as he undergoes his treatment, he has recorded a video message for the occasion.
Behind the scenes, however, aides say that the King has had a busy week by anyone’s standards, let alone a 75-year-old with cancer.
Yet those who know the King best realise that this is the job he has waited all his life to start and one that is said to give him a tremendous amount of satisfaction.
Helicoptering between his residences, he has spent nights in his private apartments at Windsor, from where he can be driven to Highgrove. He has flown to Buckingham Palace for official meetings and has spent time at Sandringham, where drives himself around the estate and has been keeping a keen eye on the progress of a botanical garden in front of the big house.
It helps, of course, that the King has lots of friends rallying around him. A palace insider said that the King’s diary was filled with afternoon teas and dinners. On Monday at Windsor Castle he had two friends, a married couple, over for dinner and left the next morning for his medical appointments in London. There were private afternoon teas and dinners all week, each one attended by one or two friends who can be relied upon to cheer him up while Camilla is away.
The King’s treatment continues as an outpatient, yet is often carried out in the comfort of his own home in Clarence House. He found time for the important head-of-state duties, meeting the chancellor before the budget and holding a video call with Justin Trudeau, the prime minister of Canada. He held an in-person meeting with the high commissioner of Jamaica. He also received ambassadors from Algeria and Mauritania at Buckingham Palace.
A Palace source said: “He has had to stop some of the things that he loves on doctors’ advice, in particular the giant receptions where he is in the middle of it, meeting as many people as he possibly can. But he is mindful that while he is temporarily constrained over public-facing engagements, he can still crack on with things behind the scenes.”
While he is away from duties, Camilla has stepped up to carry out solo engagements, which would otherwise have been attended alongside the King. Should the worst happen at some stage, Camilla would fulfil a unique role, becoming Queen Dowager rather than Queen Mother as she is not the mother of the incoming monarch, William. Kate would become the Queen - yet, with Charles’s near-daily public pictures, it is her health that has sparked more concern. Kensington Palace insist on silence and privacy, but while they might be able to control the Ministry of Defence there was another phenomenon which was less malleable: Celebrity Big Brother.
Stepping into the vacuum came Gary Goldsmith, Kate’s uncle, who appeared on the reality television show to give us his thoughts.
Like a Shakespearean jester of the royal court, he has unwittingly been the one to speak the most sense about the princess’s condition so far.
“She’ll be back, of course she will,” he reassured television viewers. “I spoke to her mum, my sister, she’s getting the best care in the world.
“All the family’s done is put the wagons round and look after family first before anything else. They put a statement out and just said: ‘She’s taking some time to recoup and will see you at Easter.’ ”
And the Palace’s view on Uncle Gary’s thoughts? “We won’t be commenting.”
The Times
