During quieter gossip days, I tend to just google various royals to see if any of them are up to anything interesting. Which is why I know that certain outlets – The Daily Mirror and the Daily Express especially – endlessly recycle old stories and old quotes and try to create weird clickbait stories. Sometimes it works, which is why very stale royal tea often gets presented as some kind of “news” in certain outlets. I think that’s what’s happening here, but it’s really interesting. The Daily Mirror recycled old quotes from Prince William and then-Kate Middleton’s famous 2007 breakup and repackaged them to make it sound like the royals still probably hate Kate’s pushy mother Carole Middleton. This is a “new story,” published this week, and it’s being picked up by other outlets. It’s very weird:

Kate Middleton reportedly felt “isolated” when Prince William’s pals and palace officials made “snobby jibes” about her mum Carole Middleton. The couple briefly split up in 2007 as the media reported at the time that Kate tried to laugh off the jibes but ultimately worried she would never be accepted within William’s aristocratic circle.

Prince William’s friends would “ridicule” Carole’s former career as an air stewardess, as reported in The Mirror in April 2007 during the couple’s short-lived break. Furthermore, courtiers also said Kate was unsuitable for William as Carole did not speak eloquently enough. The Daily Mirror’s Royal Correspondent at the time Vanessa Allen reported that a royal insider said: “She [Carole] is pushy. Rather twee and incredibly middle class. She uses words such as ‘pleased to meet you’, ‘toilet’, and ‘pardon’.”

Kate had apparently tried to laugh it off, but became increasingly isolated and abandoned as she feared she would never be accepted by William’s pals, who are the upper-crust of British society.

The Prince was said to have enjoyed taking breaks from the pressures of the highest echelons by relaxing at Kate’s £1million family five-bedroom home. Another Palace insider added: “William got on well with Carole. He liked flopping down on the sofas of their Berkshire home, enjoying the normality of that. The Queen was fond of Kate and liked her father. But let’s just say there was a feeling that Mrs Middleton was not right or acceptable.”

Carole raised eyebrows when, on first meeting the monarch, she greeted her with “Pleased to meet you” instead of “Hello Ma’am”.

Carole and former pilot husband Michael became self-made millionaires through their successful business Party Pieces, a mail-order firm for kids’ costumes. Neighbours of the Middletons at the time reportedly branded the family as “ghastly” people who were “social climbers” and accused Carole of grooming Kate to be a royal bride. Reports at the time added that Prince William couldn’t “away from the fact his future mother-in-law was looked down upon in senior royal circles”.

Within a few months after publishing, Kate and William were back on.

[From The Daily Mirror]

People who just started following royal gossip when Meghan came along really never knew that the British press was often critical of Kate, William and the Middleton family back in the day. Back in 2006-07, Kate was definitely seen as one of the more suitable options for William, but it was widely known/considered that Kate did nothing but wait around for William, and that she had a pushy, gauche, ghastly mother out of a Jane Austen novel. Even though there were qualms about Carole, the Queen absolutely did try to push William into marrying Kate and there were definitely some efforts made by the palace to start treating her like William’s future bride. The problem? William didn’t want that. William kept dumping her to try his luck with other women. Kate played the waiting game and it worked.

As for why this is coming out again and why other outlets are picking it up… it’s a mystery. The easy explanation is that the Cambridges are on their summer holiday and the British papers are looking at no big royal stories for the next six to eight weeks or so. So maybe they decided to poke at Kate, William and Carole a little bit for fun. The more convoluted explanation is that perhaps William has let it be known that the Middletons are no longer under his protection? I keep thinking about how the Middleton PR operation went into f–king overdrive a month ago ahead of the fakakta statue unveiling, all because William told Kate she could not attend it. Kate basically threw a week-long pity party for herself in the press, letting it be known that she alone was the keen linchpin and without her, the unveiling would end in disaster. Carole even got into the action, letting it be known that she was William’s “second mum” and she’s a better mother than Diana. I wonder if that was some kind of turning point for William.

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