If nothing else, it’s certainly an interesting moment for one of the Daily Mail’s major royalist columnists to choose to whack Prince William. On Friday, the Mail published Amanda Platell’s latest column, “No one seems to dare say it, but William is the monarchy’s next big problem.” I mean… I don’t disagree, but let’s hear her out, maybe Platell will make a new argument for why Prince William is a ticking time bomb for the future of the monarchy. Platell might take a circuitous route, but she gets there in the end: William is terrible because he’s lazy, reluctant and timid in times of crisis. Fascinating! An excerpt:
As he prepared to deal with the worst crisis to have hit the Royals in living memory, King Charles issued a perfectly poised statement that must have been extremely painful for him, distancing himself from his brother and stating that ‘the law must take its course’. But where was William in all of this? All we know is that he and Princess Catherine ‘approved of’ the King’s statement. Why haven’t we heard more from them?
We learn that behind the scenes, William is Andrew’s fiercest critic in the royal family. That he rightly feels both the late Queen and his father indulged his awful uncle for far too long…. So the steel is there. As is the fury. Which he could not contain when Andrew sidled up to him at the Duchess of Kent’s funeral on the steps of Westminster Cathedral. His face seemed contorted with anger. So why are we not hearing more from him now? Is it because he is the most reluctant King-in-waiting we’ve ever had?
Instead of addressing the issue in public, he chose to do a BBC interview on men’s mental health, alongside Professor Green, a rapper and singer-songwriter. All very worthy and an important subject. But it sounded self-indulgent. The headline was ‘William Gets Candid’ and he talked about his own mental health struggles as a first responder when he was a pilot for the air ambulance service dating back to 2015.
For one thing, given the way Andrew’s friend Jeffrey Epstein abused and trafficked girls, women’s mental health would have been the more timely topic. And surely he should be tackling the matter of the moment, the unprecedented threat to the Monarchy presented by the Andrew crisis. William is its future and he should be out and about, front and centre, reminding us of the undoubted benefits of the royals, trying to ensure the Firm’s survival. Not whingeing on about how he was ‘carrying everyone else’s emotional baggage’ and it was ‘really weighing me down’, and he needed time out to recover.
Willliam and Kate do pitifully few royal appearances, claiming they prioritise the ‘impact’ of royal engagements over the ‘volume’. But that won’t wash. King Charles, aged 77, performed 533 official engagements in 2025 while battling cancer, while his hand-wringing son William, 43, did just 202. When Charles was Prince of Wales as William is now, he conducted over 530 royal engagements every year, including 100 visits to foreign countries when he too had a young family, and when William and Harry were grieving after their mother Diana’s death.
Of course we have the utmost compassion for Kate and for William during her cancer treatment. We understand why he took time out from royal duties. But the way he and Kate moved to their new Forest Lodge ‘forever home’ buried deep in Great Windsor Park in 150 acres of a fenced-off, no-go zone, gives the impression they want to distance themselves as far as possible from the rigours and demands of royal life.
It is time for William to man up and front up. Does he want the top job or doesn’t he? Does he want the Royals to carry on or not? There is no doubt that Andrew is potentially a mortal threat to the monarchy, but if William really is as reluctant to become King as he appears to be, it could be that he’ll become the problem, and not just the Andrew.
This is similar to a point I made last week, when we learned that William and Kate were “on vacation” at Anmer Hall, just six miles away from Wood Farm, when Andrew was arrested: if we’re supposed to buy the idea that Will and Kate are just one unchewed wonton away from the crown, surely they both should have had more to say after Andrew’s arrest? I even argued that they should have been saying much more BEFORE the arrest. William’s BBC Radio was tone-deaf for the unfolding crisis, but it speaks volumes that no one at Kensington Palace thought anything of releasing that pre-recorded interview a day before Andrew’s arrest in the first place. William’s team – even with the crisis manager Liza Ravenscroft – is simply not built for this.
I’ve seen people suggest that William and Kate are fading away on purpose this month because they want to look “clean” compared to King Charles. That might be the real thought process, and if it is, it’s dumb as hell. “Hiding out in Norfolk whenever the going gets tough” is not inspired leadership. Which is the larger point – William’s people can’t throw tantrums constantly about how he needs to be regent or king immediately and then just… not show up when he could be leading the institution out of a crisis.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.
