The people who work at Kensington Palace could not find their asses with both hands and a map. They could not crisis-manage their way out of a wet paper bag. While different people are (nominally) in charge these days, this is the same kind of stubborn wrongness which we saw in 2022, as Prince William and Kate staggered from one crisis to the next during their Caribbean Flop Tour. They just refuse to be capable. They refuse to be effective managers. So, why am I ranting about this again? The Daily Beast’s Tom Sykes has a humdinger of an exclusive, in which multiple “sources” close to Prince William swear up and down that everything is going perfectly to plan when it comes to the Princess of Wales’s recuperation and 64-day-plus disappearance. They swear up and down that Kate’s disappearance becoming a global joke is perfectly fine! They even swiped at the Daily Mail!! Oh, there will be hell to pay. Some highlights:

Kensington Palace will not be pressured into answering the peasants’ questions: Friends of William and other royal sources told The Daily Beast the palace would not be pressured by “toxic” speculation into changing their carefully planned approach of saying as little as possible about the princess’ recovery. One friend, asked about media commentary suggesting that the palace should be more open, such as an assertion in the Daily Mail that “by saying nothing, (the royals) invite speculation,” said: “The newspapers are always telling the family how to run their press operations. This time—surprise surprise—they seem to think it would be a good idea for the royal family to give them more information about Kate. William isn’t a big one for doing stuff because the Daily Mail says he should.”

William is sticking to his guns: When The Daily Beast pointed out that similar appeals are also being made not just across broadcast and print media but on social media by ordinary people too, the friend said: “If William has read any of this stuff, it will only make him more determined to stick to his guns and keep his wife out of the limelight while she recovers. The stuff people are writing is toxic.”

KP will not give any updates on Kate: A former royal staffer who still has friends and contacts inside the palace said: “Anyone who expects the palace to suddenly start giving lengthy updates on Kate will be disappointed. The principal aim of her being sequestered is to guard her privacy. I’m sure the press hate it because it is working. There is a really, really small bubble of people who know exactly what is going on.”

Sources claim that William & the Middletons have been doing the school runs: Fellow parents at the couple’s school told The Daily Beast that William has been sharing school-run duties with the couple’s nanny. “He seems the same as ever,” one shrugged. Kate has been convalescing at the couple’s home in Windsor, Adelaide Cottage, and has also made a trip up to their country home on the Sandringham estate.

Kate’s situation is less dramatic than the online speculation: Kate’s office at Kensington Palace did not respond to a question from The Daily Beast asking if they were likely to provide more information about Kate’s health in light of the recent media clamor for them to do so. However, conversations with sources suggest that is very much not going to happen. While unfounded theories as to what is “really” going on” with Kate are ten a penny on social media, friends of the royal family are united in believing the truth is simpler and less dramatic. “They just want her to be able to recover in peace,” said another friend of the family. “The idea that they are going to be swayed by the idiots on social media saying she has been abducted by aliens is laughable.”

William doesn’t answer to the Daily Mail or the British people! Asked if it was not reasonable for the citizens of a constitutional monarchy to worry about the health of their convalescing future queen when their future king had canceled a high-profile public appearance with 46 minutes notice, the friend said: “That’s total bollocks put about by the media to justify their outrage at being denied private information that would sell papers. It’s very simple. William is putting his family first. That’s what a ‘personal matter’ means.”

Case closed: The friend added that they had no special insight into Kate’s condition but said, “The whole world knows what’s ‘going on’ because they have actually been remarkably open: she had abdominal surgery, it went as planned, it wasn’t cancer, she is keeping to herself until after Easter and she is doing well. ‘Case closed’ in my humble opinion.”

[From The Daily Beast]

They really are this stupid. Make no mistake. You can tell that all of the speculation really bothers them too, especially with this: “The idea that they are going to be swayed by the idiots on social media saying she has been abducted by aliens is laughable.” The idiots on social media are actually suggesting very different scenarios, as KP well knows. And this is so weird too: “That’s total bollocks put about by the media to justify their outrage at being denied private information that would sell papers.” My dude, you were in the memorial program and Constantine was your godfather. You didn’t even give people one hour’s notice before pulling out. That wasn’t the Daily Mail or the local British media turning it into a big scandal – it was the global media jumping on the news because Kate has been missing for over two months and there’s a wealth of evidence that William’s office has blatantly lied about many different things.

Also: this kind of posturing from William’s side/Kensington Palace shows that King Charles and Camilla aren’t even trying to talk sense into Peg anymore. This is basically a C&C experiment: how badly is William going to f–k this up, and how much mileage can we get out of it?

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.