Prince William and Princess Kate have been described as “boring” by a prominent U.K. columnist who urged them to “take a leaf out of Harry’s book.”
The Duke of Sussex’s visit to Britain appears to have ramped up pressure on the Prince and Princess of Wales, with the conversation about Harry taking on a more positive tone.
Nowhere was that clearer than in the Daily Mail columnist Amanda Platell, who ruffled feathers among Sussex supporters before provoking a backlash from the other side of the fence.
After Harry’s arrival in the United Kingdom, she wrote a column headlined: “Prince Harry is a shameless hypocrite. I know the real reason he visited the Queen’s grave—do not be taken in by his act.”
Harry visited Queen Elizabeth II’s final resting place in St. George’s Chapel in Windsor on Monday before his first formal engagement, the WellChild Awards, in London.
“How could he have done so, after all the damage and pain he caused her [the queen] and the Monarchy in her final years?” Platell wrote.
“Let’s hope he was on his knees begging for forgiveness after the cruel and calculating way he and Meghan traduced the Royal Family for the Sussex’s ill–gotten millions.”
By Friday, though, her tone was somewhat different: “William and Kate have become the Prince and Princess of Boring. This is why they need to stop skulking around and take a leaf out of Harry’s book,” the headline read.
Platell was explicit in her copy that she had performed an about turn: “Ahead of Prince Harry’s whirlwind four-day ‘pseudo royal tour’ many, myself included, dismissed it as just another desperate and calculated attempt to ingratiate himself into the royal fold. After all, that’s what he and his wife Meghan depend on to make their Netflix millions.
“Yet I have to confess I was perhaps too cynical. Harry’s visit brought us something we have not seen for a very long time from the royals—laughter and joy.
“Which leaves many of us asking why William and Kate have decided to hide away and become the Prince and Princess of Boring.”
Supporters of the Waleses wasted no time taking her and other commentators who praised Harry to task. One wrote on X: “WTF is Daily Mail playing at? ‘William and Kate Have Become the Prince and Princess of Boring’ by Amanda Platell.
“There’s a change in the air. The majority of us relate to William and Catherine and their devotion to each other, their family and duty. Give me ‘boring’ any time over a clown Prince and his attention seeking first wife.”
This is not the first time William and Kate have been called boring.
Take, for example, a piece by Mail columnist Jan Moir headlined: “Mr and Mrs Bland! The Mail disagrees. But JAN MOIR says she is disappointed in Kate and William… because their American tour proves just how DULL the royal couple have become.”
That was published in December 2014, two years before Meghan Markle entered royal life.
“Earlier this year,” Moir wrote, “during the Australian tour, a wisp of doubt crept in. Then there was a growing suspicion when they trotted through King’s Cross station in baseball caps, before the awful truth emerged on their whistle-stop tour to New York this week.
“Which is that however you look at it, be you republican or royalist, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have become a terrible, terrible disappointment to us all. I’m sorry, but they have.
“Nearly four years after they married at Westminster Abbey, in a fairytale ceremony that was gasping in its gorgeousness, the gilt is off the gingerbread, the bloom has gone from the rose.
“From the tips of her favourite nude shoes to the top of his Homer Simpson forehead, Kate and Wills have proved themselves to be as dull, dull, dull as Windsor moat water. They are High Street, not high class.”
Disquiet over whether they were boring, or “workshy” as Rupert Murdoch’s tabloid The Sun used to call them, disappeared after Meghan’s arrival in the palace precipitated a royal storm.
The social justice era had been provoking a backlash from conservatives at the exact moment that socially conscious Harry and Meghan fell out with William and Kate.
The battle lines were drawn in perfect symmetry to the wider societal debate about “woke” progressive politics, and the right-wing papers in Britain wasted no time deciding whose side they were on.
Now, though, Harry and Meghan have stopped firing their royal bombshells. They also spend less time channeling socially conscious causes; Meghan’s main projects are a cooking show and an online lifestyle shop.
With Charles and Kate’s health said to be under control, the ocean in which the royals swim has become far more tranquil.
That may well have opened up space for the ever-hungry U.K. media to demand more from William and Kate.