Real reason Kate Middleton is being kept hidden away
The Princess of Wales has disappeared and the real reason why she’s managed to get away with it is down to her husband.
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In 1850, Alexandre Dumas wrote that year’s beach read, The Man In The Iron Mask, a dark tale about an unnamed prisoner, clamped in metal and shut away from the world.
Somehow, this week, much of the internet decided that Kate the Princess of Wales is currently starring in the sequel. ‘WHERE IS SHE?’ excitable sorts on social media have been shrieking, as a torch-wielding mob prepares to storm Buckingham Palace to demand proof of life.
Let me be the one to tell you: No, the 42-year-old had not had implants or had anything lifted nor has she left her husband Prince William to go off on some Eat, Pray, Love quest to realign her chakra nor is the truth that she is in hiding to grow out blonde streaks.
Except that, leaving aside the internet’s paranoid tendencies, what is irrefutable is that Kate is being kept hidden from view.
On Friday came a nice big juicy clue about what is going on.
Consider, first, what a logistical feat keeping her concealed has been so far. It is now more than two months since Kate has been seen in public, during which time the princess managed to make it from the Waleses’ country home in Norfolk to Windsor to a London hospital then back to Windsor and later Norfolk for half her before Windsor again – and all without once being spotted.
Most miraculously, the Prince of Wales managed to somehow squirrel his wife out of the luxe, private clinic where she had undergone abdominal surgery in January despite half the world’s available TV cameras being vigilantly stationed around the hospital.
More interestingly, in the month since the Princess of Wales has been home, there has been a wholesale Kate blackout.
It would have made complete sense if Kensington Palace had, once the mother of three was feeling up to it, reverted to their pandemic model, reviving their format of putting out bubbly clips of her doing Zoom calls at home, all bright jumpers and neat ponytails. (Adieu trademark blow dry. Look, we all made sacrifices back then.)
Doing this sort of video would, firstly, give the people the Kate fix they so badly need and want (royalty might be the opiate of the masses). And secondly, it would have prevented this week’s unhinged frenzy.
Instead, the palace has chosen to act like the Soviet ministry of information circa 1964, terrified that the West will find out their real tractor production targets or corn yields.
Contrast this approach with that of King Charles, who is undergoing treatment for cancer, and his Buckingham Palace outfit. He invited cameras in to see him make small talk with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in February ahead of their weekly audience and then His Majesty’s social media team made a very sweet video of him reading some of the 7000 ‘get well’ cards and letters he has been sent.
Buckingham Palace is going to some very obvious lengths to reassure the public and to ensure that the King remains visible.
So, how to understand the Waleses’ and Kensington Palace’s self-imposed suppression order?
On Friday, The Daily Beast’s Tom Sykes spoke to “a former royal staffer who still has friends and contacts inside the palace” who said, “the principal aim of her being sequestered is to guard her privacy.
“There is a really, really small bubble of people who know exactly what is going on.”
And there it is, the white whale of the royal world, the key to everything: Privacy.
For the last 20 years, William has fought valiantly and forcefully to achieve that which eluded his mother Diana, Princess of Wales and father King Charles, namely peace and space from the media and the public. For there to be some sort of respecting of boundaries. (Don’t forget that in 1995 an Italian magazine printed photos of His Majesty naked with a ‘scratch and see’ panel over his Right Honourable Member.)
With marriage, with fatherhood, with the nascence of his own household and office, the Prince of Wales has worked hard to build a life where he, his wife and their children can enjoy a level of privacy that only 15 years ago would have been ridiculous to imagine.
The days of the pack of bloodthirsty paps hunting a teary Diana down the backstreets of Knightsbridge are thankfully long gone.
The reason for Kate’s current social media and public-facing quarantining is because of the hard-won gains the prince has managed to achieve. The Prince of Wales clearly wants to give his wife absolutely everything within his power to help her recuperate and therefore no pressure to do a quickie social media post where she has to bung on a smile and a bit of rouge.
(How astute that is, is another question entirely. William’s heart seems to be winning out over his head.)
This isn’t Dumas. Kate might not be The Woman in the Iron Mask but The Woman In The Hyaluronic Face Mask? I think so. (Also, I’d read that.)
Daniela Elser is writer, editor and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.
Originally published as Real reason Kate Middleton is being kept hidden away
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