At least 21 stories that hinted at an alleged affair between Prince William and socialite Rose Hanbury, or that reported on an alleged “falling out” between Hanbury and Kate Middleton, have been deleted from U.K. media outlets, a new investigation has found.
An extensive report in Vulture also found that six stories were edited post-publication to remove unflattering information about Hanbury or her connections to the Prince and Princess of Wales. As the Daily Beast said, the report is sure to renew speculation about a cozy relationship between the British royal family and the British tabloids. It could also raise questions about whether the royal family put pressure on British tabloids, newspapers and magazines to suppress certain reports about William and Kate and Hanbury, their country neighbor in Norfolk, who also carries the hard-to-pronounce title, the Marchioness of Cholmondeley.
The stories in question were originally published between 2019 and 2024 in such publications as the Daily Mail, the Sun, the Mirror and Tatler.
Ellie Hall, the author of the report, said that years of U.K. media coverage about Hanbury and her connections to the House of Windsor “have vanished.” But she said the “mysterious individuals” responsible for the clean-up did a poor job, explaining that “broken links to these vanished stories still exist in each publication’s royal coverage from this timeframe and, in many cases, on these outlets’ official social-media accounts.”
The cheating rumors go back to at least 2019 but have never been substantiated. They resurfaced in early March, courtesy of American late-night host Stephen Colbert. This occurred amid Kate’s months-long disappearance from the public eye, before she revealed her cancer diagnosis. Prior to Kate’s cancer revelation, the dearth of information on her whereabouts — other than that she’d had “major abdominal surgery” in early January — had grown into a global PR nightmare for the royal family and had begun to inspire online jokes and social-media memes.
That’s when Colbert devoted his opening monologue to humorously leaning into the rumor that William had cheated. The late-night host joked that “internet sleuths” were guessing that Kate’s “absence may be related to her husband and the future king of England, William, having an affair.” His remarks prompted Hanbury to issue her first public statement on the rumors. She denied them and sent a legal warning to CBS about Colbert’s “royal mistress” remarks, the Daily Beast said.
Most of the stories deleted from U.K. publications didn’t directly address the rumor of an “aristocratic extramarital romance,” Hall reported. Instead, they mostly contained allusions to apparent tensions between the Princess of Wales and her reported “long-time best friend.”
For example, one deleted March 2019 story, from the Daily Mail’s columnist Richard Eden, reported on a social rivalry between the women, describing Hanbury as Kate’s “rural rival” among “the aristocratic set in East Anglia,” known as “Turnip Toffs,” Hall reported. William and Kate have a country estate, Anmer Hall, in Norfolk, England, and Rose and her older husband, David Rocksavage, the 7th Marquess of Cholmondeley, own a neighboring estate.
Another story, published in the Sun and since deleted, similarly described the women’s rivalry, reporting on the “terrible falling-out” between Kate and Hanbury, which had “stunned” royal insiders, Hall also reported.
In late March 2019, Daily Mail columnist Richard Kay published a piece that hasn’t been deleted. It also addressed the rumors of a “falling out between these two attractive young women,” but emphatically stated that the rumors are false, especially because “none of the reports have been able to offer any evidence about what the so-called dispute is about.” Curiously, though, Kay reported that both sides had “considered legal action,” which was considered excessive at the time because the legal action presumably would only be about rumors of two women fighting.
By late March 2019, the “rural rival” story had begun to gain traction in the United States, with gossip sites questioning whether the British media was trying to hint at an affair, Hall reported. Both Lainey Gossip and Celebitchy cited a deleted tweet from Giles Coren, the restaurant critic for the Times U.K., claiming that “everyone” knew about a liaison between the prince and the marchioness. But in a column published in 2022, Coren said that he was drunk and “joking” when he posted that tweet.
Hall’s reporting for Vulture also chronicles how Hanbury has enjoyed increasingly positive media coverage in British newspapers in recent years, with reports also focusing on her friendship with Catherine. For example, the Sun published a story in August 2023, headlined: “Palace Pals: How Kate Middleton’s friendship with society stunner Rose Hanbury survived THOSE rift rumours & their heartbreaking bond.”
Hanbury also has become a fixture at high-profile royal events. For example, she attended King Charles III’s coronation in May 2023, with the Daily Mail saying that she appeared to “pay homage” to Kate by choosing to wear a black-and-white dress, which was similar to an outfit the princess wore during a walkabout the previous day.
More recently, she and her husband attended a Thanksgiving service for the Order of the British Empire at St. Paul’s Cathedral alongside the king and Queen Camilla. The Cholmondeleys’ son, Oliver, also played a special role in the service, as he had during the coronation. He carried the king’s robe as one of the monarch’s pages of honor.
But while the royal family may hope that including Hanbury and her family in such high-profile events signals that all is well between everyone and there is no truth to the rumors, Hall said that Hanbury’s appearances have led people to speculate on the possibility of her “replacing” Kate as William’s wife.