Hence the rampant speculation.
I think that’s still in the rumor category.
Interesting. One of my second cousins had a possible cancer issue and was told she needed to have kids right away to guarantee she could have any. She even got pregnant before the wedding! Shocking (somewhat for the older folks) back in the 70s.
I also wondered why Kate had three kids so close together when she had hyperemesis with all her pregnancies. When my sister workd in L&D, she knew a woman who an abortion because of hyperemesis. It’s also considered by many to be the cause of death for Charlotte Bronte. It’s a serious issue.
Heck, she could’ve had a quarantinable thing.
The King, Heir and the spares couldn’t be jeopardized.
They found the original photo. Now you can see why it’s been altered.
When it was announced that she was expected to be in the hospital for two weeks (which remember, was prior to the actual surgery), the first thing I thought of was a serious GI issue - like surgery for Crohn’s or inflammatory bowel disease. They’ll kick you out of the hospital after about a week for those surgeries here in the US provided everything goes well, but I’d guess for a member of the royal family in the UK, a longer stay could be expected.
She’s always been quite thin, even after having 3 kids, and GI problems alone could be a factor in that. Chronic GI problems may have also been a factor in the hyperemesis issues she had. I could see this being something she’d rather not share with the rest of the world.
I also don’t see it as preposterous that she’s the author of the editing on that photo, either directly by doing it herself, or indirectly by having a staff member do it per her instruction. I’d guess she doesn’t have much to do right now and it was something she could spend some time on.
So it’s just gone up significantly in my personal “why should I care” stakes. There seems to be some pretty serious censorship going on:
I am assuming this is a “super injunction” situation (the old way of doing things where such issues were handled in gentlemen’s agreements over whisky at the club don’t cut anymore, especially with a left wing rag such as the Guardian)
Whatever the cause it’s crazy that a British paper can’t report on what happened on a major American TV show.
Is there, like, any evidence for that claim?
I mean, Colbert was just quoting British tabloids, wasn’t he?
It would seem very strange to me if British tabloids are allowed to write “Prince has affair” but not “Colbert quotes British tabloids, saying prince has affair”.
Is there any reason to believe this text was amended because of legal action rather than, say, an editorial decision on the paper’s part?
They’re still saying the second one, they’re just no longer repeating the name of his alleged mistress. Which might just be the sort of thing a news agency would do that a tabloid and comedy show wouldn’t.
I completely understand all that, having been read the list of possible complications and disasters prior to my own hysterectomy last year.
What I find strange is that the duration of recovery was announced beforehand. Which implies this is not a surgical complication. Perhaps there was something complicated about her situation. Perhaps it had nothing to do with the ladyparts. We really don’t know.
Exactly. I think it’s much more likely that the editor went to whoever wrote that and said, “We aren’t a gossip rag, bring this up to our standards” than that lawyers got involved.
Whatever her surgery was, I’m a bit mystified by the endless speculation about her length of recovery. She’s not just someone in the public eye - every hair on her head is scrutinised and photographed. It’s really not surprising that the doctors might say ‘you’ll be up on your feet in a few days, but you’ll be weak/off food/might lose or put on weight / lack energy for strenuous bouts of standing around in stilettos’ etc etc. They were very clear she’d be off til Easter, which presumably her doctors felt was enough time to make a complete recovery and be back to her normal level of unrealistic-for-mere-mortals radiance. I say we leave her be.
So AFAIK it was all still allusion in the tabloids, they would repeat the claims of an affair without naming names, and coincidentally also include a profile of the the Marquis. And since this happened there hasn’t been a thing. E.g. the Sun:
The Mirror:
Which in itself is pretty remarkable. You would expect both those papers to be wall to wall “Royal scandal!” But there isnt a single mention of it. Only a very nice “Princess to return by Easter” in the Mirror.
The Marchioness of Cholmondeley story has been doing the rounds for at least five years and there have been previous injunctions against naming her in press reports.
So, there are two possibilities. One is that this has some relevance to recent events. The other is that those wanting to invent a new rumour are just recycling and adapting the old one.
Scurrilous gossip site Popbitch once produced a guide on how to spot when papers were trying to beat injunctions.
It’s a useful guide for such a circumstance, in particular the first section which is about the extreme unwisdom of publicly guessing about who and what is behind an injunction.
Techniques include:
the “unrelated” news story - the injunction covers a set of alleged facts, not the existence of a person, so if you start seeing lots of references to a person in stories that appear to have little reference, or other gratuitous mentions, that’s the hacks way of trying to burnish the “public interest” line. Ditto raking up old stories as a way of keeping the person in the public eye.
The sly reference - journos are people too, and if (for example) there was a rumour that such and such a person had an interest in BDSM, you will find that phrases such as “whip hand”, “tied up” etc. start to crop up whenever they are mentioned, even if the actual rumour stays unpublished.
(For example, there was a time when simultaneously, a well known British actor and well known British footballer both had injunctions over their respective infidelity. And one newspaper published a profile of the actor which was entirely positive, including about the stability of his marriage. Which strength it described thus: “In terms of faithfulness, [actor] really is the stage’s equivalent of [footballer].” Seems fine if you don’t know, very funny if you do and has the absolute merit that neither of them could make any kind of fuss about it.)
Anyhow, the Independent ran a really bland profile of the Marchioness of Cholmondeley in a paper the other day - so bland I really couldn’t say why it was thought worth publishing.
Censorship or being reminded by your lawyers how tough British libel laws are.
Regardless it is linked to the matter, even if its only by the press reporting on them together.
And the censorship side of it is a way bigger deal than either the princesses operation and subsequent leaving the public view, or the photoshop snafu. The fact (that really does seem to be the case) that the UK press cannot report on this issue or even report on the what a major US TV presenter said about the royal family on a major US network TV show, is a massive deal.
I mean I personally do not care who the royal family is boning and how, as long as they are consenting adults (coughs looking at you Prince Andrew). But however puerile that is actually a matter of public interest (I mean the British system of government is based on who the monarch impregnates, like it or not). And what Stephen Colbert says on live US TV to millions of people is absolutely a valid thing that should be reported on freely by the the UK press.
I don’t see much different between the two things. Especially when it comes to “super injunctions” which may well be the case here.
Removing the names seems to be much different.
I read a blurb yesterday suggesting the Vogue thing had been debunked.
ELLIE HALL: The Vogue one has been pretty disproved by the good folks at Bellingcat, who if you’re not following Reporter World, they’re great. Like if you need something fact checked or debunked, you go to Bellingcat.