The Kate Middleton of It All
Oh, to be a princess disappearing into the ether
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When I scheduled today’s piece, I was so nervous the cultural moment would have passed and it would have already become faux pas to have this conversation. But the Queen of Culture herself, Hunter Harris, only just put out a piece about it yesterday so I feel well within my rights to unpack what the literal hell is going on with Kate Middleton.
Whether you love the Royal Family or hate them, it seems everyone is at least a little intrigued by the fact that such a senior member hasn’t been seen publicly in nearly four months. It all has the same charged energy that drives true crime fans, except now it’s also driving royal watchers, the chronically online, people who exclusively read Reuters, and apparently former President Obama—which is to say, kind of everyone. The ongoing debacle has blurred the lines between public interest and genuine concern and has turned countless people into Internet sleuths. Even as I’m writing this, there are reports that Kate was seen this past weekend that are just as quickly being challenged online.
This week, I wanted to explain the timeline of recent events to catch those of us up to speed, why these developments are historically significant, and what right we have to information about public figures—if any at all.
God Save the Queen Consort’s $22.99/month Photoshop Account
Before we begin today, I want it on the record that I have had my finger on the pulse of this conversation since the earliest hours of conspiracy theorizing:
On January 17th, it was reported that Middleton underwent a “planned abdominal surgery” that made her “unlikely to return to public duties until after Easter” (X). Although the press release stated that Kate knew this would drum up public discourse (and thanked us all in advance for being nosy little shits), very little chatter came from this initial announcement. That said, some people claim they began speculating immediately as it wouldn’t make sense for the Princess to make plans within her recovery window only to cancel them if the procedure was, in fact, planned.
For the rest of us, though, this conversation really began on February 27th when Kate’s husband for now, Prince William, pulled out of speaking at a memorial event for his late godfather at the last minute because of “a personal matter.” If you’re not a fan or follower of the Royal Family, I can’t undersell how much this move rang the alarm bells. Compare this, if you will, to the fact that Meghan Markle still had to make a public appearance the night she wanted to take her own life. I say this not at all as a defense of the Institution’s1 behavior, but rather as an explanation as to why this seemingly inconsequential action caused the Kate Middleton of it all to blow up.2
As Constance Grady explained in Vox, the Prince’s move signaled that
something, some people theorized, had gone terribly wrong with Kate’s health. Perhaps she was in real danger of dying. Perhaps she was in an induced coma. Perhaps her marriage to William was on the rocks, and she was in hiding. Perhaps she’d been killed and would be replaced by a body double. As the story took off, the joke theories began to take up more space: Kate was waiting for bad bangs to grow out, or to recover from plastic surgery; she’d become the villain in the viral Willy Wonka experience.
Additionally, Joy Saha wrote in Salon that
Updates regarding Kate’s condition have been scant, which has encouraged many to further look into what’s really going on with the royal family. Redditors speculated that Kate and William's relationship was on the rocks. Spanish media believed that Kate was stuck in a coma. And folks on Twitter were convinced that Kate had undergone a Brazilian butt lift (better known as a “BBL”).
You would think that after everything else they’ve done to sway or cement public opinion the Institution would be able to dispel these rumors quickly and easily. They force every mother to parade with their newborns hours after giving birth3; they tried to make us hate Meghan Markle (and succeeded in fooling some of you, I fear…); and did absolutely asinine damage control for noted pedophile Prince Andrew. The Crown’s unofficial motto is literally, “Never complain, never explain,” which is why what they did next—complain and explain—makes no sense.
On March 4th, a blurry paparazzi photo alleged to show Middleton in the car with her mother. The Palace, who, again, never speaks on anything ever unless there’s something for them to gain from doing so, was up in arms that an unauthorized photo of the Princess was released…or was it? The Palace only commented after people online smoothed out the pixelation and found “Kate” looked an awful lot like her sister Pippa.4
Then on March 10th, the official Instagram of the Prince and Princess of Wales released the above photo with the above caption. While many notable publications immediately ran the photo, the Associated Press, Reuters, and Agence France-Presse all refused to run the photo, arguing it had been tampered with.5 This is the point at which all hell broke loose because obviously!!!! Even if the Royal Family were not known for stonewalling rumors and gossip, this post would have still caused a scandal—first and foremost, the future Queen Consort of England’s wedding ring is missing. Second and secondmost, she photoshopped her children??? On British Mother’s Day???
Some of you might now be asking yourselves, “Why should I even care about any of this?” To which I’d argue: you’ve made it this far into the piece so some part of you cares about something we’ve covered. With that, let’s delve into why this (the photoshopping, the lying, and the sudden conversation about someone known as the Marchioness of Cholmondeley) matters.
Maybe the Real Friends Were the Mistresses We Made Along the Way
Picture this: it’s March 11th. You’ve just read the E4P panel on drinking (thank you). The Princess of Wales has just caused a minor global panic attack about the exact nature of her whereabouts and safety. A Tweet comes in:
For those not tracking the discourse online, this was the moment when the tone started to shift. Several individuals began to investigate the validity of all photos alleging to be of Kate Middleton since her last known appearance in December 2023; while there was still an air of conspiracy theory to everything, this was when it started to feel like perhaps the global public was truly being lied to.
But why is Kate Middleton worth lying about?
The main rationale is that the Institution simply wants to minimize and mitigate any potential scandal surrounding the Kensington Royals. They’ve already pretty much blundered this but it’s not impossible to imagine that after generations and generations of mess, the Crown has the world’s most vanilla couple poised to take over the monarchy. While King Charles is somehow favored by 60% of the British public polled by YouGov, both William and Kate rank higher than him with 74% and 72% of people having positive opinions of them, respectively. In other words, William and Kate ascending to the throne might be the best thing for the monarchy since they killed Diana.
Which is, at least to the Internet, the leading reason for the Palace to lie about where Middleton truly is. On March 10th—the day of what some people are pushing to dub “Kategate” with the same enthusiasm as Gretchen Wieners trying to make fetch happen—The Independent released an article titled, “Lady Rose Hanbury: Who is the Marchioness of Cholmondeley?” The story almost immediately started going viral as it piqued interest in a long hinted-at rumor that Prince William was having an affair with Princess Kate’s best friend and may have even fathered her two sons.6
Whoop-di-do, another member of the Royal Family cheated on their significant other—likely thing for them to do.7 Why start lying and covering all of that up now?
The answer is: I don’t know. I have spent weeks reading in-depth pieces about this conversation, following conspiratorial threads, finding hot takes on X—and I have absolutely no idea why any of this is happening. This is all so out of the ordinary for how the Royal Family has always conducted itself and its scandals.
The only theory I could possibility see being true was that the Institution has sunk so much time and effort into building Will and Kate’s cultural favor—going so far as to allegedly feed the press negative stories about Meghan Markle—that they didn’t want to waste it all on the prince’s infidelity coming to light. Though I don’t know why they’re so worried when this was the result of a YouGov survey from the day after the edited photo drama:
More to it, the Kensington Royals are still not even the reigning monarchs—for better or worse, Charles is still alive! In comparison to the Kate Middleton Debacle, the public found out the king has cancer almost immediately after we found out he had an enlarged prostate—a fact that I guess the British people should know but I personally could have gone my whole life without.
All of this only leads me back to my initial question and answer: Why is Kate Middleton worth lying about? I really don’t know.
So Now You’re Talking in Circles and Still Haven’t Made It Clear Why I Should Care About This
There are two ways to view this situation: on one hand, this can all be good old-fashioned celebrity gossip that gives the Internet something rather morbid to connect on, like when Donald Trump got COVID-19 or Queen Elizabeth II died. X has had that je ne sais quoi air to it lately and it’s nice to have a sense of digital community every so often as we backslide into the apocalypse.
On the other, there are so many reasons why the Kate-Middleton-not-being-seen-in-four-months-and-essentially-everyone-and-her-mother-are-trying-to-cover-it-up thing is a big deal.
Public figures—celebrities, influencers, elected officials, and working royals—are people, too.8 Cases have been and will continue in perpetuity to be made to allow even the most visible people to have their privacy. But those arguments lose some of their weight when public interest shifts to public concern, and that is what appears to have happened regarding Middleton. The discourse quickly moved away from jokes about her recovering from a BBL to trying to figure out what unsavory or unsafe truth the Institution isn’t sharing—because why else would they break all their rules and botch a PR situation so badly if this situation wasn’t unprecedented?9
I mentioned our conversation on true crime at the start of this piece because, admittedly, I keep drawing a comparison between the Kate Middleton discourse and the missing white woman phenomenon. I can’t help but think about how all of this would be shaking out if it was Meghan Markle this was all happening to.
While that’s undoubtedly part of it, I also think it goes a step further: for all the downsides of celebrity culture (and the list is endless), there is something positive to be said about the connections we have with the people we follow. Yes, parasocial relationships can be odd, especially to those who don’t share our feelings toward specific public figures. But they are, in a weird way, a practice of basic human empathy.
We care about what’s going on with Kate Middleton because we’ve cared about Kate Middleton since 2003. Whether or not that was really her out shopping this weekend, whether or not she’s pulling a Gone Girl to get back at Prince William and someone whose real title is the Marchioness of Cholmondeley, whether or not she genuinely pays $22.99 a month to do her own shoddy Photoshop jobs—people are going to worry and care for her.
I hope Kate resumes her royal duties as planned after Easter and this all becomes a fun piece of Internet lore. But if she doesn’t…I think Camilla did it.
FYI: “‘The institution’” refers to the institution of monarchy—the business of monarchy—so its public role. Within the institution of monarchy, there are palace aides. There will be private secretaries that oversee the diary and the day-to-day handlings of senior members of the royal family” (X).
More on the Meghan / Kate Complex later.
I know the de-pixelated photo also looks edited which I feel speaks volumes to the craziness of this situation—where do the lies end????
When discussing this image in her piece, Saha writes that “royal reporter Emily Andrews wrote on X that the Palace ‘exerted huge pressure on the British media’ to not publish the image.”
CNN went so far as to say, “the royal press team ’wasn’t transparent about the fact [the Mother’s Day photo] had been adjusted…That will have damaged the trust between the palace and media organizations.”
By the way, does anyone else remember when Beyoncé released Lemonade and certain outlets said she did it in support of Kate Middleton who also got cheated on? Or did I Mandela-effect myself?
As I was researching this piece, I found out about Amy Robsart who potentially died by being shoved down the stairs so that her husband—the Earl of Leicester Robert Dudley—and Queen Elizabeth I could get married. Historians have tried to disprove that but their arguments seem just as bizarre…?
I know we’re really teetering on the edge of finally having the conversation on celebrity culture today...all in due time.
In Saha’s piece, as she discusses some of the theories circulating about Middleton, she notes that “BuzzFeed News’ former royal correspondent Ellie Hall explained that Palace spokespersons do not go on the record very often. ‘[T]he fact that someone in the Palace said this and the journalist was allowed to cite it to a spokesperson is significant…’” (X).