While Graydon Carter’s Air Mail has a decidedly anti-Sussex agenda, the outlet ran a pretty great analysis of what’s been happening in Buckingham Palace and Kensington Palace in 2024. As in, BP looks competent, modern and straight-forward, while KP has staggered from one self-made catastrophe to another, mostly because Prince William and his staff are all incompetent. John Arlidge wrote this analysis piece of the past three months from a communications standpoint: “A Tale of Two Royal Households; When King Charles had bad news, his communications chief put on a master class in damage control. If only Kate had done the same.” Arlidge gives big props to Charles and Camilla’s big communications hire: Tobyn Andreae, who was an editor for the Mail for years. Some highlights:
Crisis management: It is also clear that the P.R. game has changed. Buckingham Palace, where the King and Queen’s press team works, and Kensington Palace, where William and Catherine’s spin doctors labor, are far less involved in the day-to-day business of engagements and royal tours, and increasingly embroiled in crisis management…Are the palaces’ finest up to the job? You might think that the younger, more digitally native royals and their advisers would be more adept at handling the modern media environment, while fuddy-duddy Charles and Camilla would not. But one of the most surprising subplots of the medical drama that has played out in London over the past few months is how well Charles and Camilla have played their hand compared with William and Catherine.
When Charles & Camilla hired Tobyn Andreae: It is even more remarkable when you consider that when he was appointed as communications director a year and a half ago, many wondered whether Tobyn Andreae was the right man for the job. It was not just that he was former co–deputy editor of the Daily Mail, a title whose reverence for the institution of the monarchy does not stop it putting the boot in. Prince Harry is suing the paper’s owner, Associated Newspapers Limited, for invasion of privacy, and it was the Daily Mail that coined the term “Waity Katie” to describe the then Kate Middleton’s long courtship of Prince William, a nickname she apparently despised, not to mention scoffing at her “social-climbing” family. Andreae was also said not to have the proper touch for a communications head. He was “too posh to gauge the mood of the man or woman in the street,” one member of the royal press pack observed.
Charles looked steady: Yet Charles, guided by Andreae, exhibited a clear understanding of what the public required in his hour of need and a moment of peril for the monarchy. In a statement issued to coincide with prime-time broadcast news bulletins, he told the world that following his recent treatment for an enlarged prostate, tests revealed that he had cancer. He would be stepping back from royal duties to receive treatment, supported by his wife and family. To calm fears over the seriousness of his condition, footage was released of him working from home. Doctors and cancer charities praised the King for doing what most men don’t: responding quickly to symptoms of illness and speaking frankly.
KP’s team bungled everything: The Waleses, guided by Lee Thompson, who cut his teeth at Freud Communications, a P.R. agency, before moving to CNBC and NBCUniversal, where he was praised for his digital and social-media skills, were less sure-footed…Kate’s amateurish Photoshopping of her family photograph, released on Mother’s Day in the U.K., revved up the global online guessing game about her health. Her apology for the “confusion” the image had caused, but not her decision to doctor it, opened up her and her family to derision. By now distrust of Kensington Palace was such that when the Waleses allowed newspapers to publish a grainy image of them during a visit to a farm shop in Windsor, many wondered if it wasn’t them at all, but rather doppelgängers.
Other forces at play: Thompson and the Waleses appear no match for Andreae and the King and Queen, but those close to both Buckingham Palace and Kensington Palace say other forces are at play. Paddy Harverson, a media strategist who has worked with most of the senior royals, points out that Catherine and William needed time to come to terms with her diagnosis and explain it to their three young children. True and reasonable. But with 20/20 hindsight, waiting weeks and weeks to reveal the truth was far too long. Those close to the Waleses also criticize newspapers for reporting on the social-media speculation, “which they knew to be batsh-t crazy but ran with it anyway because it produced headlines and clicks, which generate revenue.”
Charles & Camilla are more experienced at crisis-management: Some observers draw a distinction between the Waleses’ and the King and Queen’s attitudes to the press. One seasoned royal correspondent points out that Charles and Camilla are “much more experienced in crisis management than any other members of the royal family. They have seen it all and have the scars to prove it and, as a result, are much more relaxed these days about how much information they share.”
William & Kate are inexperienced: By contrast, “William and Kate are more private and can be very stubborn,” he says. “When they get an idea in their head—for instance, ‘we won’t share any medical details’ or ‘here is the one picture we want to release to the media’—it can be hard to shift them.” He adds that “thanks to Harry’s endless court cases in London, people assume that he is the brother who loathes the press, but, if anything, William hates the media more. He naturally wants to protect his family, but that does not always mean he and Catherine make the right decision.” Some observers, for instance, say it was a misstep not to follow Charles’s lead and release some private pictures of Catherine at home reading “Get Well Soon” cards.
One thing which goes unmentioned by Arlidge is that Kensington Palace’s courtiers clearly believed that they didn’t need to clarify or provide proof of life because William and Kate are not the king and queen. Like, that was repeated endlessly for months – Charles has to be seen and do these things because he’s the head of state, while Will and Kate are merely the understudies and therefore no one needs to know what they’re up to. That was an argument which fell flat, with me at least – William and Kate are the next in line, they are the Prince and Princess of Wales, and the 75-year-old king has cancer. They should have gotten more sh-t about their secrecy and shenanigans just because of the constitutional and state issues at play. William and Kate projected arrogance, a sense of “how dare the peasants want to know what’s going on with Kate’s health, why can’t they just believe all of the faked photos we’re handing out??” But yeah, I agree – Charles and his team have handled the comms side of everything so well this year.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Kensington Palace.
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- EMBARGOED TO 2200 FRIDAY FEBRUARY 23 King Charles III reads cards and messages, sent by well-wishers following his cancer diagnosis, in the 18th Century Room of the Belgian Suite in Buckingham Palace, London. Following the announcement of the King’s cancer diagnosis, the Correspondence Team at Buckingham Palace have received more than 7,000 letters and cards form across the world. The King has been sent a selection in his daily red box of paperwork.,Image: 849992052, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: *** NO UK USE FOR 48 HRS ***, Model Release: no, Credit line: Jonathan Brady / Avalon
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- EMBARGOED TO 2200 FRIDAY FEBRUARY 23 King Charles III reads cards and messages, sent by well-wishers following his cancer diagnosis, in the 18th Century Room of the Belgian Suite in Buckingham Palace, London. Following the announcement of the King’s cancer diagnosis, the Correspondence Team at Buckingham Palace have received more than 7,000 letters and cards form across the world. The King has been sent a selection in his daily red box of paperwork.,Image: 849992053, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: *** NO UK USE FOR 48 HRS ***, Model Release: no, Credit line: Jonathan Brady / Avalon
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- London, UK, 26 March 2024: King Charles III during an audience in the Billiard Room at Buckingham Palace, London, with Vijaya Nath (left), and with community faith leaders from across the UK who have taken part in a Windsor Leadership Trust programme, encouraging and supporting dialogue, harmony and understanding at a time of heightened international tension. Windsor Leadership is a leadership development charity which provides transformational, experience-led programmes for senior leaders.,Image: 859752178, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: *** NO UK USE FOR 48 HRS ***, Model Release: no, Credit line: Jonathan Brady / Avalon
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- King Charles III and Queen Camilla attend the Easter Mattins Service at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, UK – 31 Mar 2024,Image: 861382733, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: *** NO UK USE FOR 48 HRS ***, Model Release: no, Credit line: James Shaw/Shutterstock / Avalon
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- Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani (Republican of New York, New York) conducts a press conference at Republican National Committee headquarters in Washington, DC on Thursday, November 19, 2020. He is accompanied by Trump Campaign Senior Legal Advisor Jenna Ellis. Giuliani wiped at his brow as the sweat poured down from his forehead. Pictured: Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani BACKGRID USA 19 NOVEMBER 2020 BYLINE MUST READ: MediaPunch / BACKGRID USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
Replace sneaky for private and stupid for stubborn and I will agree. Sneaky and stupid got them into this Can’t shaped mess. These two don’t have the brains god gave them to get out of it because they don’t learn. Doesn’t matter who they put in charge they still have to agree and sign off. So hiring yes men is what they do.
And the yes men need to choose to say yes. Plenty of stupidity to go around.
Where are the bull-headed courtiers that didn’t give Harry any choice when it came to his decision to stay or leave? Are they burying their head in the sand? If a courtier’s job is preserving the monarchy and look for its best interests, how are they letting William’s temper override them? As if William was the first tantrumy monarch to be… they ALL are!
They are not stubborn. They are immature, selfish, arrogant, vain and pretentious. That is why we get no real update on kkkhate’s health because we are peasants with no right to know, no pics cuz she looks like shzz, they think they are too grand to bend to public’s demands, etc. My garbage truck passes by friday morning, I put my trash out on thrusday night, i’d like to do the same with the RF. They make themselves so detestable.
Amen to that! and by Amen, I mean louder for the people in the back 🙂
At some point during this whole debacle I also paid tribute to Tobyn Andreae in the comments section of one of the articles here. Praise where it’s due to a bunch of people I’m not fond of at all: BP has done an excellent job under this guy. Lee Thompson deserves to be thrown under a bus for how he’s bungled his job. He might work for stubborn dimwits, but he’s the name connected to the job.
It’s very kind of you to blame Thompson and not his superiors, William and Kate. Like the article states: they are stubborn. They also think entirely to much of themselves. It may very well be that Thompson suggested an approach similar to that of BP and william and kate shut it down. Because they are private beings when it suits them & they don’t feel like they owe a simple explanation to the public despite being public figures and the self proclaimed representatives of Britain.
Kind?
Anyway, Lee Thompson was presumably hired due to his expertise and resume. No matter how incompetent his bosses are, he’s the one who is the PR expert. Under him, K was thrown under a bus for the Frankenphoto. Is that excellent work on LT’s part? A lack of information other than abdominal surgery? The fact that KP’s reputation is on par with North Korea and Iran? If he can’t do the job, he can always leave. Otherwise, he’s technically the expert and he cannot communicate properly with the idiots he works for or the public.
@Chloe, I agree. You can’t blame the staff for the incompetence of the bosses. W&K are ‘private’ bc of low self esteem. They have to hide their weaknesses and have nothing else to offer. He is reactive and ignorant and she is a vacuous breeder. You can’t create shiny diamonds from soft mud.
Tobyn Andreae is a tabloid man and Celebitchy is his greatest source of inspiration. Everything he has done has been mentioned here 😍😍 Someone here mentioned about reading the cards to the public and three days later it was done by the Palace. I could give ten more examples 😍 Celebitchy has the best commentary on Royal Life.
On Celebitchy’s influence, it seemed to me that Camziĺla
was wearing a better bra for Easter? If that is the case, then all hail Kaiser!
Celebitchy is a Royal Influencer. I do love reading the comments here, always insightful and never just nasty for the fun of it. (Twitter still exists for that!)
I don’t think Lee Thompson suddenly forgot how to do PR. I think William refused to cooperate until they were a global embarrassment. I also remind everyone of when Catherine Quinn was hired to work for Kate and she had excellent real world skills. She stayed for two years and left as soon as her contract was done to “do more community service”.
Exactly this – we’ve seen this in real time with the Colonialist Caribbean Cosplay disaster, all the advice in the world can’t stop those two from embarrassing themselves on the world stage.
I do think there may be a vicious cycle: they likely hire people who will follow orders but also aren’t willing to listen to criticism. Thompson certainly isn’t a novice, but his expertise appear to be more in American media and tv than the ins and outs of the royal court.
I mean I guess, but that’s only because the media at home and abroad is allergic to asking questions. From where I’m sitting, Buckingham Palace was just caught faking photos of (at the time) the sitting monarch, and there’s been zero follow-up or pushback. We still don’t know what type of cancer Charles has, what his overall prognosis is, whether the financially-strapped UK will be forced to foot the bill for another huge state funeral and coronation. Questions abound, but because Camilla didn’t have to take public credit for Yassifying a portrait of Charles I guess we’ll just ignore it all.
I don’t think it’s an allergy to asking questions. More that there’s only so much general interest. Charles has cancer – does it really matter what kind it is? He’s getting treatment, he might recover or he might not – and that’s pretty much all the interest the public has on the subject. And I don’t think people care about the BP faked photo – it’s Elizabeth, there are a bunch of grandchildren, end of story. As for the funeral and coronation, no need for a lot of discussion about that, either – those come with the territory when you have a monarchy.
If W&K had handled things differently, the public would have been satisfied in the same way. We’ve talked about it here ad nauseum – a simple statement, a little something from Kate to thank well-wishers, William getting out and doing some work. That would have appeased most everyone. Instead, we were treated to a public nervous breakdown – that’s unusual enough to warrant questions.
If they were just a celebrity family then general interest may dictate coverage, but Charles is Head of State – he approves/ can prevent legislation before Parliament, receives classified govt intel (it was reported that Will already does too), he meets with the Prime Minister weekly (they’re not discussing organic farming). His health, mental capacity, judgment are extremely relevant, even if the public is satisfied with the fluff or just bored.
And it wasn’t a celebrity mom Insta-filtering a photo of her grandparents, it was Buckingham Palace – again, official office of the Head of State – faking an image of the Head of State. The implications are galaxy-level. If they had to fake a photo, where was QEII? What was her mental capacity at the time she was still carrying out official state duties, from the upside down sword to cut that cake up to and including the Liz Truss farce just days before she passed? In other words, how far back did her diminishment go and therefore her susceptibility to and eventual reliance on outside influence?
The royals hide behind the mask of neutrality while they vampirize the UK for all it’s worth (the Duchy of Lancaster makes millions off stealing the assets of tenants who’ve died without a will). I totally 100% agree with your last paragraph, but again my premise/focus is that there needs to be a delineation between the public being uninterested/satisfied and over a topic and the newsworthiness of that topic. Like, I never want to hear about that big orange menace another day in my life. I have to and I will because he is (unfortunately) still newsworthy and – just like with the royals – the public is done a disservice every single time his bloviating distraction is covered as entertainment fodder instead of the political implications we should be focusing on.
@Eurydice
It appears that youre approaching this from the POV of “as a matter of course, this is what WanK ought to have done.”
“If W&K had handled things differently:………a simple statement, a little something from Kate to thank well-wishers, William getting out and doing some work. That would have appeased most everyone.”
Er……no. It wouldnt appease anyone with commonsense and critical thinking skills. That would mean ignoringt the fact of that little matter about alleged DV and resulting alleged coma/incapacitation and hence, the many barefaced, fake proof-of-life attempts.
Interest in this latest matter arising from the UK’s top tier bunch of pampered poodles has gone way beyond that little island, beyond royalists and into the zeitgeist of mis- and disinformation, fake news and the rewriting of history and reality thats plaguing our world right now. Lots of folks hv made a connection between frequent allegations of:
– Bully’s alleged constant state of “incandescent rage,”
– his hate-filled impotent rage at being unable to extract vengeance for what he considers to be his brother’s “betrayal;”
– his undisguised couldron of hate for his brother’s wife;
– the night-and-day drinking
all coming to a head with the MIA newly-crowned princess of wales.
In fact, its so concerning for many that any day now, I expect to hear that someone has filed a writ of habeas corpus.
So again, no. The only “different” way that Wank could have handled the glaring “something aint right” of the last 3 months, was to have told the truth.
But they cant. That would be bad for the monarchy.
Hence drunken morbid takes like the one from wyatt about kHATE having “saved the monarchy.”
How, by shutting up and dying quietly?
@Sunday
*standing ovation from me on that one*
@Sunday – It’s not an allergy that the BM dance to the RF’s tune. And it’s not the business of the foreign press to spend their cleaning up the RF’s mess, when they could be reporting on more important things.
The other part of the equation is clicks. The most interesting thing that ever happened to Charles was over 25 years ago – he got plenty of clicks then. Now, he’s profoundly uninteresting – he’s an old guy with cancer, which is too bad, but what difference does it make what kind of cancer he has? He’ll die sooner or later. The only thing necessary is that there be a monarch, but it doesn’t matter who and there’s a system in place for transfer. It seems the public are ok with it, so the BM aren’t going to get a lot of clicks from that.
I’m not going to get up in arms about the Elizabeth photo. I think it’s important that the news agencies be more skeptical about what comes out of BP and KP and they’re doing that. As for who was in charge during Elizabeth’s last years, we already know that – Harry warned about it, too. And even if her diminished capacities weren’t obvious, what did people expect once she got to be over 90?
@Kingston – I am approaching the subject exactly as you said at the end of your post – tell the truth. That’s what I meant by “a simple statement.” At this point, W&K’s actions have muddied things so much that no one would believe the truth, whatever it might be.
Even though the queen was in that pic it was issued by KP not BP.
Good point, thanks.
In the VF article it specifies that the photo was issued by Buckingham Palace even though it was credited to Kate. Whether BP was directly responsible for the doctoring or was just so clueless and inept that they ‘accidentally’ used Kate’s ‘innocent’ edits to put forth a false impression of the sitting head of state, it’s still relevant.
Same goes if this is all to be blamed on KP, too – for example, at a time when Will’s wife was keenly editing photos of the Head of State, was Simon Case Will’s private secretary or back at No 10?
A little off topic, I think Charles and Harry kind of made peace with each other and maybe with Meghan too.
Quoting Meghan, “they’re Harry’s family” in other words Harry can deal with.
LOL yes that’s why Harry still fights for the security and still stays in a hotel whenever he goes to the UK.
If that was true, Meghan would have been at the coronation.
Did the King deliberately choose Archie’s birthday for the coronation, and if so, why?
Wow, right from the first sentence – Charles has a “press team” and William has “spin doctors.”
I noticed that too
I still believe that William was trying to hide Kate’s cancer because he wanted out. He can’t divorce a cancer patient, he’s stuck with her now.
Maybe not Juliana. I could see headlines about a ‘sad & sudden deterioration’….
I didn’t say it at the time of the announcement but I 100% agree. KP was trying too hard to pretend everything was fine cause if her cancer diagnosis was made public, he’d be locked in. And now he is.
Going through that, I caught that KP’s head of comms worked at Freuds, the PR firm in London. And suddenly their bad comms makes so much sense. I have worked with Freuds before, and they are the worst PR agency I have ever worked with. Racist, sexist, no sense at all as to what is appropriate ( I work for NGOs in public health): the stuff they were proposing was not only inadequate, but just so WRONG. They were utterly useless.
Honestly, I totally get why their PR is so bad now, truly. They hired trash.
Interesting insight, thank you! It absolutely fits with why WanK would like this guy.
Interesting intel, I’m sorry you had to work with those jerks. Your work is vital!
So it’s all “privacy for me but not for thee” from Huevo, then? I mean, he was just fine planting fake stories about Harry and Meghan in the press and all of the privacy invasion that happened to them.
The straight-faced “they’re just a family who wants privacy!” messaging lately is something to behold.
This. The BM used privacy to attack the Sussexes. So many eye rolls about them wanting privacy. When they never actually even said that.
Sunday:Thank you! Charles and BP look more competent only because the bar is in hell. When they say they never complain or explain, what they mean is they never have to complain because the media does it for them, and they never have to explain because the media never asks them.
If Harry and William had banded together, they could have taken down the media.
It would have been ideal. I think H suing the The tabloids is also eating at him with jealousy. However, that would require W to come clean about his alleged wrong doings. He chose to fold and gave his power to the press which will evetually do more damage to the monarchy in this day and age. Too bad.
I’ve said this before but the rota should be fairly worried at how private and stubborn William and Kate are. They are going to get scraps and very obvious lies when William is king. Along with disdain and derision. Obviously, Rebecca English is good with it but not all of them will be. Honestly, growing up, William went through a lot of the same as Harry with the press. Although he was more protected. But I could understand his disdain if it wasn’t for the fact that he made deals with the press he loathes while throwing Harry and Meghan and their children to the wolves. It’s hard to hold a moral high ground about the press when you’ve jumped into bed with them and rolled around and gotten dirty as hell.
Charles’ team handled this so much better than KP as we have said on here for months and it was fascinating to see it play out in real time, mainly bc we did see that stubbornness at work. KP didn’t want to release any medical details so they didn’t, for as long as they possibly could. And even the video created more questions than it answered.
Could Charles and Camilla be more open – what type of cancer, what stage, etc? Yes. But overall I think they’ve handled this well, especially as we have seen Charles consistently over the last few months. It’s the lack of visibility from KP along with the lack of transparency that has caused so many questions and so much doubt.
Also Becks I think Charles being an older man it didn’t have the same impact as someone younger getting hit with illness/cancer.
While there is sympathy of course for anyone I think when it’s a young mother people are more shocked.
And I’m still not sure it isn’t a cover for something else. The way KP handled it only created doubt.
BP let the world in; KP shut us out and played us for fools. Cams publicly visited CRex in hospital multiple times; Huevo did a drive-by with his bro squad once. Charles showed his face being discharged from London Clinic; KP gave us Twigs in a Blanket. Charles posed reading get-well cards; KP photoshopped Kate’s face from 7 years ago onto Someone. Charles has appeared in public; NotKate and Wills -lite did a 30 second power walk at the Windsor Farm shop seen only by one person. BP put forth the real CRex; KP tried multiple times to fool us into thinking we were seeing 2024 Kate.
If we take the type of surgery at face value, there was no reason for kate not to show her face in a car leaving the hospital. That moved up the questions significantly especially the suspicions of why Kate wouldn’t want to show her face.
Agree with both of you. The weirdness started from the minute KP announced her hospitalization and KP just kept adding to the weirdness. The twigs? The lack of hospital visits from William? The frankenphoto?
Either they are extremely inept or they are hiding something, or both.
Perhaps Kate has realised that being Queen isn’t going to be much fun.
They are private? Can be stubborn?
Privately lavish, stubbornly bone idle.
Or lazy, incurious, unintelligent, vacuous – while freely, happily wasting money provided by the taxpayers.
They haven’t yet managed to create a lasting legacy besides mumbling, flashing, pegging, cheating, drinking, backstabbing, copykeening, fighting, raging – the list is endless.
Too bad the rotten rats have no desire to research what’s wrong with the Prince of Ales and Schrödinger’s Princess, and call them out on it.
They are setting Lee Thompson up to be fired by showing he didn’t have the right résumé to work in a royal household.
I’m surprised he’s lasted as long as he has. Who will replace him? I’m guessing Victoria Newton will appoint someone for William. So we’ll have a DM person for BP and a Sun person for KP. That’ll be fun🙄
I think he’s going to jump before he pushed out. I’d be surprised if he’s there after Summer.
I agree – I don’t blame him, either! Who would want this gig?
Considering that KP has a very cozy relationship with Becky English and the fact that William was an active player in Meghan’s lawsuit against the MoS, I think we can conclude that William and Kate have forgiven the DM for the Waity Katie moniker.
Wow – that NBC guy is still with KP? Who knew? It’s genuinely surprising to hear that any KP hires are still there after a year.
Yeah, so basically, Billy and bone are a cluster fk when it comes to doing their jobs, where as Charlie has played a winning game, led by general camzilla.
To me BP is not handling this PR disaster well, hiring an ‘inside man” is not a policy, it’s just a smart hire. cHuCkIe and Cowmillia are reminding Peg and Buttons who’s boss and their place in the spotlight with this piece. Also, nobody is going to go after the big fish (KC/BP) when the small fish (KP/the Wails) have exposed themselves for years and even more lately. The royal rota are nothing more than street punks and bullies writing “fallen to the ground fruit” stories because they’re the least amount of work for the same goal and pay. *Sorry replaying SPARE while painting some rooms and reminded of RR awful behavior, so I’m a little spicy*
And yes, I think Tobyn does read this site, Cowmilla’s bra game has been up, so thanks. Now can we get distance shots of her, the tight shots…OOMPFF.
Camilla’s cultivation of the vile tabloids has really paid off in recent months. Her horrible conniving has worked. She’s being depicted as the savior of the monarchy (which is ludicrous).
The Waleses, meanwhile, continue to blame others for their mistakes. (“Those close to the Waleses also criticize newspapers for reporting on the social-media speculation, …”)
Loved that bit. They’d gotten a little to used to telling the tabloids what to write about themselves & they went rogue! Reported about the SM stuff! HA!
As understudies William and Kate are sure making a lot of noise to get Harry to come back and be THEIR understudy so they can do nothing.
I would be surprised if they had reached out. Certainly be a turn up for the books
For sure they have not reached out but they love to have their friends in the British media saying that Harry should come back and do all the work for them.
Look, this is the same old sleight of hand we’ve been having for weeks now – Kate didn’t go to hospital for cancer so that’s why she couldn’t adopt the same approach as Charles!
Cancer, as we have learned, gets you unconditional sympathy and silences all your critics, I expect KP has always known this but they didn’t have this option initially (and honestly, they may not even have it NOW given her mealy mouthed construction ‘HAD been present’) did they, because she went into hospital for MYSTERY ABDOMINAL SURGERY which she STILL doesn’t want to say ANYTHING about?
Perhaps if Charles had had whatever the horribly shameful abdominal surgery Kate apparently had he wouldn’t have said anything either.
Cancer turned up and sorry, it totally got Kate off the hook for the first thing, that’s the reality. Got her off to the extent that people have even forgotten that first issue existed or say stuff like “we should have known the non-cancerous thing would turn out to be cancer! Kate’s always been such a hard worker, it must have been something serious to keep her away from her duties for 3 months! And of course, cancer is so serious and scary, that’s why she couldn’t immediately tell us about the non-serious and non-scary condition she actually needed the time off to treat!”
And another thing, Kate’s hand was not forced by a security breach. First of all Kate was only too delighted to tell people she had cancer, its given her all the time off and undeserved praise she ever wanted, secondly, if someone had accessed her records they would know what the abdominal surgery was for. Since Kate has not come clean about that we can safely assume no nefarious third party is threatening to spill the beans.
The blackmail storyline was just more innuendo for sympathy as they already knew that sympathy was what they would get, as another commenter flagged up a previous story British Olympic cyclist Chris Hoy had recently been in the news for announcing cancer having made very clear he had no choice as the press were about to out him. They even nicked his line about wanting to protect his young family.
If I were him I would have taken my chances because the most interesting thing about his cancer diagnosis, honestly, was that he had been blackmailed about it. I don’t think he is like Kate where he has to be ‘visible’ (mainly to contrast with her SiL). I think most people wouldn’t even have noticed he was ‘gone’.
Kate’s abdominal issues may not be shameful or even remotely interesting but at this point in time they are still a MYSTERY. Why would anyone accessing her medical records leave that on the table?
Didn’t she say that the doctors think they got the cancer out and the chemo is just in case.
So the doctors don’t think she has cancer, but they know she did have it.
The same old excuses for William and Kate being “inexperienced”! Sorry, but they are both 40 and next in line to the throne. They have both been in the public eye for, conservatively, 15 years. They reside in taxpayer-funded palace(s), they siphon public and duchy funds, and they have defined, public-facing roles. Notably they are not too inexperienced to receive the funding that comes with their respective jobs!
Bad at it as they undoubtedly are, this pair have also represented the British monarch on the world stage. They have all of the expertise and resources they could possibly want – arguably much more than Elizabeth had at 25 when she assumed the throne. It’s time for the media to stop this ridiculous and infantalizing language: These are adults who have had plenty of time to learn their jobs. If they are still this bad at it, it’s because they choose to be.
Put another way, if they crave secrecy and privacy so much, they are welcome to quit the public roles that they are both obviously so unsuited for and immediately pay back the funds and relinquish the palaces. Citizen Bill and Kathy are welcome to as much privacy as they can stand!
Aside from the thirsty Tindal’s, Will and Kate are rarely seen with his family outside of ‘work’ because they are both insufferable. That’s the truth.
“thanks to Harry’s endless court cases in London, people assume that he is the brother who loathes the press, but, if anything, William hates the media more.”
Billy boy must have been full of intense incandescent rage to team up with the media he loathes to attack his brother.
He hates the media sooo much he went on t.v and called his mother paranoid.
Will and Kate are extremely entitled. To think the same media they teamed up with would not turn their poisons pens on them is something. Will must have HATED seeing Kate explain to the media her health condition. It makes sense why he offered her no visible support. lol
It’s darkly hilarious that they’re still trying to pretend that the Windsor Farm video they “allowed” the press to publish shows Kate. I don’t know who that woman was, but that ain’t Kate. How do I know? BECAUSE I HAVE EYES. So sick of KP doing this “Who are you going to believe? Us or your lyin’ eyes?” routine.
Weren’t we just told the other day that Kate has a mischievous child side to her? Now she’s shy!