More than a year after Queen Elizabeth died in September 2022, we still don't have all of the details of what was going on behind the scenes in the royal family, and at this point, there's a chance we never will. But now, one royal expert is seeking to answer a question that plenty of royal watchers have had all along: Why didn't Kate Middleton go to Balmoral to say goodbye? Apparently, it had less to do with Kate and a lot more to do with the family's feelings about Prince Harry.
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The senior royals all went to see the Queen before she died.
Just hours before the Queen's death was announced on September 8, 2022, news broke that the senior royals in the family had rushed to Balmoral to be at her bedside as she was declining. At the time, her children were reported to be there, including King Charles. Although Prince William made the trip, his wife did not.
Will and Kate had only recently moved to Windsor.
That September day ended up being a busy one for the royal family. That same morning, Will and Kate had been photographed with their three children, Princess Charlotte, Prince George, and Prince Louis, as they arrived for their first day at a brand-new school.
Kate was thought to have stayed home from Balmoral to be there for the kids, but as it turns out, that may only be part of the reason.
Kate was the one who decided to stay back.
According to an excerpt from The Making of a King: King Charles III and the Modern Monarchy that was obtained by People, author Robert Hardman said that although Kate did decide that someone should stay behind for the kids, another factor may have been playing into it.
By sheer luck, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle happened to be in Europe at the time, and given his tenuous relationship with his family, the royals weren't sure if he should be there in his grandmother's last moments.
Some people believed that because Kate wasn't there, Meghan couldn't be there, either.
But Hardman wrote that wasn't necessarily the case, and in the book, he said a royal aide told him, "It was by luck rather than judgement, but it made it a lot easier to tell Harry he was coming alone."
Well, wasn't that convenient?
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Elsewhere in the book, Hardman shared more details on the day.
"The Duke of Sussex was still in the air and out of contact. In his memoir, Spare, he suggests that no one had told him and that he was reduced to learning the news from the BBC website as the plane was landing. Not exactly," Hardman wrote. "A member of the Palace staff says that the King had been urgently trying to make contact with his younger son. ‘There were repeated attempts to get through to him but no calls were going through because Harry was airborne.'"
The way the situation played out is heartbreaking all around. We may never know what the truth actually is, but either way, how things played out seems to have had a major impact on each member of the family.
