Was Rose Hanbury the one who originally leaked the rural rivals story?

The rumors started about five weeks ago – that’s when The Sun published the shady article about the Duchess of Cambridge trying to “phase out” her “rural rival,” Rose Hanbury, the Marchioness of Cholmondeley. Within 24 hours, Prince William ran to Richard Kay at the Daily Mail and got Kay to write one of the most curious denials ever, a denial which seemed to underline the point that there was something major happening between Rose, Kate and William. The Kay piece also threw the Duchess of Sussex under the bus completely, and for no apparent reason. In the days that followed, we heard gossip that the “rural rival” story was the British-tabloid code for an affair between William and Rose and later, we heard that the affair had been happening for some time and that William’s lawyers were basically threatening every British media outlet about publishing anything about it.

So why this trip down memory lane? I don’t know, I actually haven’t written a story about Rose Hanbury in weeks, although I’ve mentioned her in royal coverage a few times. Everybody seems to be talking about it anew, even though there hasn’t been any new gossip in weeks. William’s lawyers did a good job shutting down the story in the print media, but obviously, the story is still gathering steam online and on social media. Last week, Pop Alerts tweeted this (about a month too late) and it started another round of rumormongering online:

Prince William has cheated on Kate Middleton with her best friend, Rose Hanbury, according to reports.

The Prince & Duchess have been together since 2003 & share 3 children together. Kate returned to London with only her kids, last night. The royal family has not commented. pic.twitter.com/Ssv9YX3aDm

— Pop Alerts (@PopAlertNews) April 24, 2019

I feel like the affair story keeps getting second and third lives because A) William and the British press establishment have used Meghan as a human shield to deflect criticism from the Cambridges and B) because the affair story just FEELS true. Especially given the cover-up moves from the past month – if this had just been idle gossip, surely William wouldn’t have brought down the hammer on the story so thoroughly.

Which brings me to this Royal Foibles post from a few weeks ago – I only saw it last Thursday. I’m not going to post excerpts or even try to summarize the whole thing, suffice to say that I agree with many of the theories/rumors in it. I think William and Rose started happening during Kate’s last pregnancy (the Louis pregnancy) and that Kate only found out about this year. I also think Royal Foibles is right about Rose Hanbury doing the “rural rivals” leaking as a way to punish Kate for not understanding the aristo rules. There’s SO MUCH juicy stuff in this story though and it’s absolutely worth a read for all royal-gossip-followers.

So the question is “what’s next?” What’s next is that Baby Sussex comes and that will dominate headlines for weeks and William and Kate hope that when everything is settled, no one will remember Rose Hanbury. William will continue to shut down any British-media speculation and the papers, fearful of lawsuits, will agree to cover it up. And the Cambridges will be fine. William always had a wandering scepter and Kate always ignored it. The reason why this affair became such a big deal is because Kate tried to phase out Rose and Rose wouldn’t let her. But the Cambridges’ marriage is fine. I even think they’ll try for another baby later this year.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.

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