So, Why is Everyone Suddenly Talking About Rose Hanbury?

By Kayleigh Donaldson | Celebrity | March 13, 2024 |

By Kayleigh Donaldson | Celebrity | March 13, 2024 |

Kate Middleton is still out of the spotlight, recovering from surgery and being the subject of the most feverish conspiracies this side of pizza restaurants and fake moon landings. The Palace’s PR has been so messy, so curiously slapdash and full of holes, that the internet and media at large have been unable to stop themselves from sinking further down the rabbit hole. The actual whereabouts of a very famous person isn’t really the point anymore: it’s more about the fascinating implosion of a supposedly airtight organization that has been unable to put out the fires without starting several more in the process. Watching supposedly sensible people sink into pure delusion that is often indecipherable from QAnon has been, to put it mildly, a lot. And all over something that really could have been easily avoided. Now, however, it’s completely out of the Windsors’ hands, and it seems that even the most pro-royal publications are getting antsy. And the media is starting to troll them with mentions of an oft-whispered name in Will and Kate’s inner circle.

We’ve seen the labyrinthine theories surrounding Kate’s whereabouts, photoshop skills, and marriage veer between plausibly intriguing and pure pulp fantasy. The legitimate questions, such as the Associated Press’ rejection of that photograph, cannot help but open the floodgates to pure madness. Conspiracies flourish because they are, by design, impossible to refute. So, it was perhaps inevitable that Rose Hanbury’s name would be thrown into the ring. I didn’t expect places like The Independent to be the ones to fling it in there.

The Independent published a piece online titled ‘Lady Rose Hanbury: Who is the Marchioness of Cholmondeley?’ It’s typical SEO stuff, a piece designed to answer questions that are frequently Googled. But them dropping this in the midst of the Katespiracy is, to put it mildly, pointed.

By the way, ‘Marchioness of Cholmondeley’ is pronounced ‘Marsh-on-ess of Chumley.’ No, I don’t know why either.

The thing about Hanbury, who is a perfectly normal toff who used to work for the Tories and then married an older man with an estate, is that her name only seems to come up in the mainstream press when there’s a whiff of scandal in the air. In 2019, The Sun ran a weird piece that alleged Kate and William had split from the Cholmondeleys and Kate was working on excluding her from their social circle altogether. This story, about the ‘Turnip Toffs’ with whom Will and Kate socialize (seriously), didn’t seem massively juicy on its surface. But then headlines emerged claiming the then-Cambridges were going to sue The Sun for publishing this story. It seemed like much ado about nothing, right up until whispers grew that Rose and William were, uh, close.

A ton of other more clickbait-focused websites started running pieces on Hanbury, with some just straight-up suggesting that she was the mistress of Prince William. The details they offered to explain this were mostly the same stuff we heard about five years ago, a lot of which was thanks to a now-deleted thread of editorializing by Nicole Cliffe. It was juicy fun and we discussed the rumours at the time on this site. As I said at the time, ‘The point of this was to try and understand just what it is about this particular bite of gossip that has proven too irresistible for not only Royal watchers but the non-British press.’ Rumours are reported on, and more rumours spread, and British journalists subtweet along to add to the drama.

And now, so is Stephen Colbert? He just straight-up talked about the affair rumours on The Late Show (it’s about nine minutes in.)

Is this funny? Yes. The names alone are enough to make you wish we lived in a more sensible era. Come back, dinosaurs, all is forgiven. Is it weird that this is now part of a late-night talk show opening monologue? Also yes. The First Amendment certainly gives them the space to make jokes about it in a way that British TV can’t because our libel laws are way stricter. Is this also making an already messy conspiracy even worse? Oh yes.

I do think it’s important to clear up a few things though. No, The Independent is not ‘soft-launching’ Rose Hanbury as the future Mrs. Wales. They just wrote an SEO-friendly piece to pick up some ad clicks because this is the broken model of online journalism and The Independent is a shadow of its former self. No, we have no proof that an affair is happening, and any publication that claims otherwise is straight-up lying. We’re still dealing with a lot of gossip and conspiracies here. For those who are committed to the Katespiracies — and possibly making bank from it, you know who you are — this is just another cudgel with which to batter home their theories. It’s not been pleasant to watch so many people become conspiracists, the prosecco Pizzagaters, if you will.

I’ve already been accused of being a royalist stooge for expressing caution over this drama, which is hysterical if you know anything about me or my coverage of these parasites. Shockingly, I don’t think being an anti-royalist is incompatible with feeling discomfort at how this story has revealed the worst in so many people. I don’t like seeing people who think that supporting Meghan or opposing the monarchy gives them a free pass to be as misogynistic as they like. I don’t believe there is anything radical or progressive about engaging in corkboard-and-red-string paranoia and claiming it’s journalism.

If any good comes from this, it’ll be a worldwide reminder that no monarchy is infallible and that the roots of the Windsor stranglehold have greatly weakened since Liz 2 died. Charles is being treated for cancer and is out of the spotlight, the Waleses aren’t especially popular, Kate’s ‘missing’, the spare and his wife are recording podcasts in Montecito, and Andrew is an accused sex offender who was unashamed BFFs with a paedophile. If all this lot are good for is gossip, it’s not worth the price tag to the taxpayer.

Abolish the monarchy.