Kate Middleton Reportedly Feels "Exhausted and Trapped" in the Wake of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's Royal Exit
With reports that Prince William and Prince Harry are in a great place and that the Cambridges and Sussexes aren't harboring any ill will against one another, a source is coming forward and explaining that Kate Middleton feels "exhausted and trapped" now that Harry and Meghan Markle have decamped to Los Angeles and stepped away from their roles as senior royals. With that shift, it seems that Kate and William have had to take on Harry and Meghan's duties and that additional workload may be too much for Kate.
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One of Kate's friends told Tatler that "Kate is furious about the larger workload. Of course she's smiling and dressing appropriately but she doesn't want this. She feels exhausted and trapped. She's working as hard as a top CEO, who has to be wheeled out all the time, without the benefits of boundaries and plenty of holidays."
Tatler's sources continue, saying things started long before the COVID-19 pandemic and that William and Kate had intended to spend more time with their kids. Now that the Sussexes aren't attending royal appointments, that plan seems to have fizzled out. Though there's been no official statement from the palace, Tatler's sources paint a grim picture.
"Meghan and Harry have been so selfish," says a friend of Prince William and Middleton to the publication. "William and Catherine really wanted to be hands-on parents and the Sussexes have effectively thrown their three children under a bus. There goes their morning school runs as the responsibilities on them now are enormous."
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E! News adds that after Harry and Meghan stepped away from the royal family, Kate and William had more than a dozen royal engagements in one month. "Kate understands that the only credo of the Royal Family is duty, duty, duty," a source adds. "Whereas with the Sussexes it is constant uncertainty."
The news comes after Kate said that she planned on keeping her children at home during the summer, even though many schools are set to re-open. The Sunday Times reports that Kate and William want to keep Charlotte and George "together and to maintain their lockdown routine."
"George gets very upset because he wants to do all of Charlotte's projects ... making sort of spider sandwiches is far cooler than literacy work," Kate explained. "Yeah it's really hard, we haven't done a huge amount of FaceTime and face calls and things like that but we're doing a lot of that now and actually it's been really great. We sort of try and check in daily with family members and speak to them about news and things like that."
Tatler's story does say that the rumors of tension between Kate and Meghan are real, however, and that things can be traced back to Meghan's wedding.
"There was an incident at the wedding rehearsal. It was a hot day and apparently there was a row over whether the bridesmaids should wear tights or not," Kate's friend told the magazine. "Kate, following protocol, felt that they should. Meghan didn't want them to."