Dear Gossips,
Prince William stepped out today to visit a youth program in Hammersmith and Fulham ahead of tonight’s Diana Legacy Awards. The Prince of Wales is expected to give a speech and hand out awards to the 20 young people who are being honoured for their philanthropic participation.
Prince Harry, meanwhile, will also be involved, remotely, as he’ll be doing a video chat with the award recipients from California once the banquet is over. It was also kinda like this last year for this event – Harry showed up in person in LA and William recorded a video message.
William’s presence is noteworthy right now because of course the entire world is asking where Kate Waldo is. That would be his wife, who typically is at his side at public engagements but who has not carried out a public engagement since the end of last year and who is currently embroiled in a photo doctoring scandal for which she fell on the sword, even though so many people are having a hard time believing that she’s the one actually responsible for the f-ckup.
EVERYONE is talking about Kate’s disappearance. Stephen Colbert had it in his monologue the other night. Andy Cohen was on it on WWHL. The New York Times just ran an opinion piece about the situation this morning. TikTok is exploding with theories about what happened to her. Rose Hanbury, Marchioness of Cholmondeley is coming up again as gossips are digging into the files to speculate on what could possibly be the reason for Kate’s absence.
The official reason, of course, is that she is recovering from abdominal surgery – that’s what Kensington Palace has told us, but there are a LOT of people who don’t believe this, or don’t believe that that’s the *only* thing she’s recovering from, which means that Kensington Palace and the royals lack credibility, people don’t trust them. And that’s a HUGE problem for the British monarchy because their whole sh-t is based on stability. And the crown is not stable right now! King Charles is receiving treatment for cancer; his brother has been an outcast for years for associating with pedophiles and sex traffickers; his heir is bailing on memorial services while his wife has become the internet’s most prominent missing person; his youngest son and his wife are living in another country because he and the institution failed to protect them…
So it’s not hyperbolic to call this a crisis, in the midst of which William has to put on a tux tonight and step back into the fire. There are always eyes on William, wherever he goes. But right now, especially, he’s the biggest heatscore. It’ll be interesting to see how he handles it. Or, you know, maybe Kate will make a bombshell surprise appearance and take back the narrative. At this point they need to a produce a stunt that will actually work in their favour. It’s just that they haven’t shown us that they’re capable of that kind of strategy.
Yours in gossip,
Lainey
