In 2018, Richard Dennen became the editor-in-chief of Tatler. Dennen was close to then-Kate Middleton at St. Andrews, and he has seemingly maintained that friendship for two decades. I really and truly believe that Dennen likely okayed the new Tatler cover story which is currently blowing up in everyone’s faces. I maintain that it started out as yet another Embiggening Kate project, simply because most of the quotes are variations on things we’ve already heard from “unnamed sources” or “palace sources” over the past few years. That Kate never puts a foot wrong, that she’s controlled and controlling, that Carole stage-manages her life.

So why did the piece end up so shady? My theory is that the Cambridges and their “friends” all think they’re PR geniuses and they’ve shown time and time again that they’re not, actually. William and Kate think that because they successfully bullied the Sussexes out of the country, everyone in Britain will be forced into buying whatever the Cambridges are selling. Now that everything has blown up, the Cambridges can’t distance themselves far enough:

Earlier, royal sources said a claim in the piece that Kate felt furious, exhausted and trapped after Harry and Meghan’s exit left her with a bigger workload was untrue.

— Richard Palmer (@RoyalReporter) May 27, 2020

LOL. It’s gotten so bad that now Keen defenders are claiming the Tatler piece was all some kind of hit job from Meghan! Remember when Prince William ran to Richard Kay to cry that Meghan was to blame for the story about his affair with Rose Hanbury? That’s what this is again. The Cambridges f–k up, they badly miscalculate something and then they blame the Sussexes.

I also wanted to point out something else Tatler had – the cover story was full of hilarious quotes about how much Kate works and how upset she is that Harry & Meghan have left her to pick up the diamond-encrusted shards of royal duty. Quotes like “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.” And sources arguing that Kate’s “perilously thin” figure happened because she’s a “multitasking mother of three – one countenancing the additional worries of defending a Royal Family seemingly under siege.” Or how about this? “Meghan and Harry have been so selfish. 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.”

I repeated those quotes from the cover story because Tatler did a “Kate by the numbers” piece and I found two of the numbers fascinating: Kate has 21 patronages and she’s done 1,201 royal engagements since her wedding. Nine years of marriage and she only has 21 patronages? Does that figure count The Art Room, which had to close this year because of lack of funding because their royal patron is so lazy? And I’m sorry, but 1200 engagements in nine years is flat-out pathetic, especially when you consider what “counts” for Kate’s engagement numbers. She counts “private meetings,” “private parties,” “Zoom calls” and “walking on a tarmac” as engagements and she still only averages out to 130 events a year.

Update: HOLY CRAP. A Tatler spokesperson spoke to Entertainment Tonight about the Kensington Palace denial and said: “Tatler’s Editor-in-Chief Richard Dennen stands behind the reporting of Anna Pasternak and her sources. Kensington Palace knew we were running the ‘Catherine the Great’ cover months ago and we asked them to work together on it. The fact they are denying they ever knew is categorically false.” Oh my god, the drama!!

Photos courtesy of WENN, Avalon Red and Backgrid.