Seriously, Where is Kate?

Even if you couldn't care less about royal goings-on, you have to admit it's curious.

Other than being admittedly excited to watch Lady Di and Prince Charles tie the knot in 1981 (mostly because it was the middle of the summer and there was literally nothing else for a twelve-year-old latch-key kid living in the sticks to do), I’ve never been particularly interested in the royal hype. (Although NGL, I could watch Mia Thermopolis finding out she’s the heir to the throne of Genovia on a loop for days if wine and charcuterie were involved.) Even though I did recently crown myself the Princess of Pretty Much Everything, I find the whole actual monarchy thing pompous and incredibly confusing.

I mean, why is Charles the Prince of Wales when his mother was the Queen of England? How come you only get to be called a lady if your dad is an earl? What even is an earl? Or a duke or a count or a marchioness? And lord? Really? Did they just run out of fancy-sounding secular words? How did vampires get all up in the mix, anyway? (Yes, I realize I could google all of this, but a) I don’t actually care, and b) not-knowing is the new smug.) Why is William the Duke of Cambridge and Harry the Duke of Sussex and Andrew the Duke of York and Edward the Earl of Wessex and seriously you guys, I think they’re literally just over there making shit up.

Royal Title Maker: Sorry, old chap. We’ve already got a Duke and an Earl of Piddlehinton. Cambridge is altogether taken, too, I’m afraid. Let’s see… We could make you the Knight of Northumbria? No? What about the Earl of East Anglia? The Viscount of Shitterdon? The Baron of Sandwich? Work with me!

When Princess Kate—who was recently promoted from Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Cambridge to Catherine, Princess of Wales when the Queen died do you see what I mean?—first went AWOL more than 80 days ago, I was surprised and maybe even a bit bored by the buzz. Not that I don’t or didn’t care about a fellow human being who may be having health issues, but I was pretty sure that whole “abdominal surgery” business was a cover for a little nip/tuck action. Let the gal recover from her mommy makeover in peace, people.

But then things got weird. It started with the super-edited “Mother’s Day” photo (that “Kate” later “admitted” was just a mum’s bumbling attempt to digitally spit-shine her kids or something). Then there was the photo of nobody looking even remotely like Ms. Prince William (sidebar: did other people know that royals don’t even have last names? Like Wills’ last name can be Windsor or Wales or Mountbatten-Windsor as the whim strikes an entire day has now been devoted to this research, gentle readers) with her supposed mother—like any of us have any idea what she’s supposed to look like—that the media hailed as definitive proof-of-life. And then the paparazzi dropped another photo of a sliver of a face in a darkened car that was definitely Kate, looking jolly swell trust us, God you people need to get a life.

“Where’s Kate” became every other TikToker’s favorite new game. The conspiracies were wild and all over the map: She’s vaccine injured (duh). She has Crohn’s disease and is having a colostomy bag installed. She’s in a coma. They moved her to a secret village behind an ice wall in Antarctica with a bunch of other royals. The cabal is falling! They’re taking them all out! She had an affair. She had an affair so they kicked her out of the Palace. She had an affair so they killed her. She had an affair so they killed her and now they’re trying to clone her corpse. William actually had the affair and the other gal is pregnant and Kate flipped out so they took her to a mental hospital. She got bangs and deeply regrets it (my personal favorite and frankly, the one I’m hoping is true).

The thing is, the harder they try to convince the nosy commoners that all’s just peachy at the Palace, the sketchier the whole thing seems unequivocally is.

The latest: A viral clip of another suspiciously not-resemblant-of-Kate woman taking a casual stroll with maybe Prince William through Windsor Farm Shop, obtained by The Sun and published with the headline “GREAT TO SEE YOU, KATE.”

Apparently we’re to believe this is the princess. Oh, and nobody cares.

Farm shop footage of Kate Middleton should put an end to conspiracy theories, the New York Post typed hopefully hahahahaha, while TMZ insisted “New Video Shows (Kate) Happy, Healthy.” There were lots of “eyewitness” quotes and comments about how relaxed and smiley the princess appeared, a sight which must have been incredibly mesmerizing because not one of the alleged onlookers snapped out of their trance long enough to grab even a grainy iPhone photo. Which is weird. You’d think that when the world’s most famously missing future Queen of England (*or Wales or Sussex or Surrey or Stratford-upon-Avon who even knows) pops out to pick up some crudité with none other than the guy who was crowned the Sexiest Bald Man of 2023, at least one looky-loo might think to commemorate the event.

I tumbled down the world’s squirreliest rabbit hole for you guys trying to figure out what the word on the street is. Somewhere down near the bottom, I found Elizabeth April. April, a “cosmic intuitive channeler” who apparently is able to travel outside of her body to visit strangers, hopped across the pond—telepathically of course—to look for Kate. And do you know what? She couldn’t find her anywhere. (She did find William, and there was “a lot of dark stuff around him,” FYI. Yikes.) April’s theory, in summary, is that Kate is gone-gone from this earth and the farm store thing was the Palace “test driving” Kate’s clone and yes I just spent 24 minutes of my life watching that video, you’re welcome.

I’m not calling April a nutjob. I do believe in psychic abilities and in other dimensions and to be honest, I’m more suspicious of the idea that this is all there is than there’s a whole quantum universe out there that our pathetic little pea brains can’t even fathom. What I’m saying is that if the clone conspiracy turned out to be this week’s winning bingo pick, I wouldn’t even be all that surprised.

The point of this post is look at what the last four years have done to us. Will we ever again trust anything we read or hear or even see with our own eyes? If Kate-Kate appeared in an exclusive interview with Tucker Carlson tomorrow—after taking a DNA test on camera and offering up her dental records—and proceeded to give a totally plausible explanation for her absence (complications from an embarrassing tummy tuck which led to depression which inspired the cutting of bangs, for example), would we believe her? Would we even believe it was her? Because her clone would have the same DNA, right?

We know what AI is capable of. We’ve all seen that undercover CIA lady’s TED talk about the agency’s “disguise labs” that can create masks so realistic that basically anyone can have an identical body-double—or dozens of them. We know that they lie (all of them, all the time, about literally everything), and that when they’re caught in a lie, they just double down and lie some more. Never-not-ever do they admit they were lying, not even in tiny type buried on the back page with the garage sale listings. The reality is I suspect we will never really know what happened to poor Kate. Which is probably for the best. Because unless the truth turns out to be that secret village behind the ice wall in Antarctica, it’s bound to be a letdown.

Me? I pray Kate is perfectly fine. I hope she just got fed up with the pressure to be a pretty, perfect princess and flipped a royal finger at the monarchy and marched out—kids in tow—and now the panicky Palace is scrambling to put a positive spin on it. It may not be as salacious as some of the other theories, but it would serve those pretentious, self-important prigs right.

What do you guys think happened to Kate? LMK in the comments.