I wondered if royal reporters and commentators would bother to discuss yesterday’s events in detail. As we covered, Prince William and Kate did not attend the Windsors’ annual pre-Christmas lunch at Buckingham Palace on Thursday, and what’s worse is that their office openly briefed the media about their absence. The cherry on top was that William and Kate released their long-awaited Christmas card, timed specifically to coincide with the lunch. It absolutely felt like a weird snub to King Charles and Camilla. It also felt like… William and Kate do not care one bit about the royal family or family traditions. Well, some unnamed royal sources had a lot to say to the Daily Beast’s Royalist:

Prince William and Kate Middleton risked appearing to snub King Charles and Britain’s minor royals Thursday as they skipped the monarch’s traditional pre-Christmas lunch with the extended royal family at Buckingham Palace.

One source, a former courtier, told The Daily Beast: “It is another example of the couple’s growing confidence when it comes to challenging some long-established traditions which they are widely believed to consider tiresome. Charles would have liked them to be there, and the fact that he was either unwilling or unable to insist on it shows his inability to maintain family discipline. You can’t imagine anyone missing it when Prince Philip was around.”

The couple’s spokesperson declined to comment, though a friend of the couple pushed back against the courtier’s characterization of events, saying: “It’s categorically not a snub. They have had a full-on year and I don’t think anyone can expect Catherine to be effectively hosting lunch for hundreds of people.”

An official source said the prince and princess had been through “an incredibly tough year” and that the family simply “wanted to start Christmas in Norfolk earlier than usual.”

Kate was diagnosed with cancer earlier this year. She has since said she is “cancer-free.”

[From The Daily Beast]

What? “I don’t think anyone can expect Catherine to be effectively hosting lunch for hundreds of people.” No one asked Kate to do that? There was simply an expectation that the Prince of Wales and Princess of Wales take their taxpayer-funded personal-use helicopter and fly to London to enjoy a lunch with their extended family. No one asked William or Kate to play host or organize the lunch? What are they talking about? As for this: “the fact that he was either unwilling or unable to insist on it shows his inability to maintain family discipline” – I mean, it’s sort of true? Charles probably did not insist because he honestly didn’t want those two wet blankets there, nor did he want the lunch to become another event in which Kate tried to steal his thunder. We talk a lot about “Will and Kate are supremely lazy” and “Kate is being benched from this or that,” but there’s also a problem of Charles genuinely not wanting Will and Kate around because Charles is so self-centered and he wants all of the attention.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.