BURYING THE HATCHET

Kate Middleton Love Bombs Meghan and Baby to Crush Rift Rumors

The duchess stopped for a casual chat with a cellphone-wielding member of the public and sent a clear message to the world: Nothing to see here, move right along. Will it work?

Kate Middleton made a deliberate attempt to draw a line under rumors of a rift at the heart of the royal family when she met members of the public in Leicester on Wednesday.

Asked if she was excited for the arrival of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry’s first child, Kate enthusiastically replied, “Absolutely,” before adding, “It’s such a special time to have little kiddies. And now a cousin for George, Charlotte and Louis as well! It’ll be really special.”

The comments were captured on a cellphone recording and the video was later posted to Instagram.

Kate also spoke about her own kids in the clip, saying, “They’re doing well, thank you. They’re getting excited for Christmas time, because they’ve started all their Christmas songs and the Christmas trees are going up.”

The impromptu comments represented the first public push back against a series of stories about the alleged deterioration in the relationship between William and Kate and Harry and Meghan over the past week.

The stories began to emerge after it was revealed that Harry and Meghan were moving out of the Kensington Palace compound, where they live alongside William and Kate, to a luxurious five-bedroom home on the royal Frogmore Estate near Windsor. There were lurid reports that the two married couples had fallen out, and that Meghan had made Kate cry in an argument over Princess Charlotte’s bridesmaid dress.

The story came hard on the heels of revelations that Harry and William are to divide their courts after many years of working together as a team.

Vanity Fair reported that the row went back to last Christmas, when Harry was annoyed that his brother had not, in his view, “rolled out the red carpet” for Meghan.

And there have been reports that Meghan made a series of unreasonable demands ahead of the wedding, and that Harry was heard to shout at his staff on occasion, “What Meghan wants, Meghan gets!”

Now, it seems, Kate is ready to buckle down to the hard work of convincing the public, one Instagram at a time, that reports of a major falling out with Meghan are overblown.

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Tom SykesEuropean Editor at Large

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