As we discussed yesterday, Prince William flew out of the UK on Thursday for what will be a four-day trip to Kenya. Even though William’s press office released the information as if this was a business trip involving a meeting with Kenya’s president and then “private” conservation work, every media outlet is reporting the trip as “William flies solo to his ex’s wedding.” The ex in question in Jecca Craig, William’s longtime friend and his alleged “first love.”
Some details about the trip… William and his press people insist that the trip is private and that he paid for his plane ticket himself. But he has three protection officers along with him, paid by the taxpayers. He also flew his private secretary to Nairobi last-minute to attend the meeting with President Uhuru Kenyatta, and that’s at taxpayer expense too. Most of the royal reporters and UK media outlets are not holding back at all – if you’d like to read a hard-edged series of tweets, I would suggest checking out the Daily Express’s Richard Palmer here. Palmer notes:
William has remained intensely loyal to Jecca but his trip means he will be away from work and his wife and children over Easter. The Duke of Cambridge was also off work from his air ambulance job for a long stretch at Christmas. William has claimed he works only part-time because he wants to be a hands-on dad. Kate and children will spend Easter with the Middletons.
It is not clear if William, a future Supreme Governor of the Church of England, will attend church on the holiest day in the Christian faith.
The whole idea that the heir to the throne and the future “Keeper of the Faith” would miss going to church on one of the most important days in Christianity is also something that The Daily Mail’s Richard Kay picked up on. I don’t want to oversell this Kay piece, mostly because it’s just a history lesson about William and Jecca’s relationship through the years. But the fact that Kay – who was once Princess Diana’s go-to journalist – is writing about Will and Jecca’s relationship openly is pretty interesting. Of course, Kay dutifully insists that Jecca and William are probably just friends, and that Will’s obsessed more with Kenya than Jecca. You can read the full piece here. The most important details:
‘Clearly he is going to Jecca’s wedding with Kate’s blessing,’ says a former royal aide. ‘But it does look like the behaviour of a bachelor prince, not that of a father of two, including a ten-month-old infant.’
According to Kensington Palace, ‘one private secretary was at the meeting but is not spending the whole weekend there [with the prince]’. Insiders said William has paid for his own flights in and out of the country because the ‘private’ trip had already been planned before the meeting with President Kenyatta was arranged. He will, however, also take with him at least three Scotland Yard police protection officers, whose costs will be met by the taxpayer.
Lest the impression is reinforced that William’s life has become one foreign jaunt after another, by happy coincidence photographs of the prince at work with the East Anglia Air Ambulance also emerged ahead of the trip. They showed him helping to remove a patient on a stretcher from his helicopter, and then going with him in an ambulance to Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge.
And there is one other troubling aspect to this trip, which may rankle among some in royal circles, and it concerns the prince’s absence from the royals’ Easter church service at Windsor.
‘The Queen views Easter Sunday as the most important date in the Christian calendar, and she likes to gather her family round her for the traditional walk from Windsor Castle to St George’s Chapel,’ says a courtier. ‘William, after all, is a future head of the Church of England.’
Clearly he’s going with Kate’s blessing? Yeah, who believes that? It’s more like he does what he wants and Kate just has to put up with it. As for Kate’s Easter plans, “someone” leaked some details to Hello Magazine – Kate has already taken the kids to Berkshire, and she’ll be spending the holiday “privately” with her family. Pippa and James might even come up to help celebrate. If Carole is the manipulative genius I believe her to be, I think she should organize a pap stroll with the whole Middleton clan and the kids going into a local church on Easter morning.
Photos courtesy of Pacific Coast News.
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