For the second year in a row, Kate Middleton and Prince William skipped the royal family’s traditional Easter Sunday gathering, a decision that some are characterizing as a deliberate snub. Instead, it was multiply–disgraced Prince Andrew and ex-wife Sarah Ferguson beside King Charles III and Queen Camilla at Sunday services, while the Waleses remained at home.
Also making the walk to St. George’s Chapel this morning were Princess Anne, Prince Edward and wife Sophie Rhys-Jones, and Andrew and Sarah’s daughters Princess Eugenie and Princess Beatrice. The full group was expected to follow their morning at church with a traditional family lunch, an event that Charles skipped last year due to his then-recent cancer diagnosis.
Kate Middleton and Prince William, as well as children Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis, also skipped the family gathering in 2024, amid the Princess’s recovery from her own cancer treatments. In January, she announced that she was officially in remission, saying then that “As anyone who has experienced a cancer diagnosis will know, it takes time to adjust to a new normal.”
Prior to her illness, Kate and William upheld tradition by attending Easter services with the rest of the family, but perhaps that new normal includes picking and choosing what events to devote their time to. Instead, reports Hello!, the Waleses are spending the weekend at their Norfolk country home of Anmer Hall, just days after William and George were spotted in the stands of Birmingham’s Villa Park stadium for the Champions League quarter-final match.
According to an unnamed source close to the royals who spoke with Us, William and Kate’s decision to pass up this weekend’s family event “is a big deal.”
“It’s royal tradition for the family to attend this together,” the source claimed. “Everyone understood the family not attending last year when Kate was sick but there’s been a lot of raised eyebrows at the palace about William’s decision to skip again this year. It feels like a deliberate move and even a snub.”
One hates to speculate about family rifts, especially on the basis of an anonymous quote—and the royals have certainly seen their fair share of estrangement, given Prince Harry and Meghan Markle‘s ongoing separation from their family in the UK. But one also wonders if the younger generation’s understanding of optics played into Kate and William’s decision to stay home.
After all, things don’t seem to be getting any better for Prince Andrew, who in recent months has been engaged in a real estate dispute with the king, was cut off from the family financially, and—after his relationship with a Chinese spy came to light—withdrew from the royal Christmas celebration. And that’s not even mentioning the years-long scandal over his relationship with convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
It’s understandable, perhaps, that the 76-year-old king, who was briefly hospitalized last month following a reaction to cancer treatments, is eager to gather his siblings around him, regardless of their past misdeeds. After all, this is the same man who said Thursday that “There are three virtues that the world still needs — faith, hope and love. And the greatest of these is love;” it is certainly easier to forgive family members for the sins of the past when the future feels fragile.
Similarly, though, one wonders if Kate and William also had their futures in mind. when they chose to sit today’s church visit out. It’s one thing for an elderly and ailing monarch to commune with a higher power with his fallen brother. It’s another thing for the country’s next king and queen to be photographed with someone accused of sexual abuse of a minor. If that was the thinking behind william and Kate’s Norfolk holiday, that would be a refreshing new normal, indeed.
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