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It appears that several UK media outlets have erased any trace of affair speculations between Prince William and Rose Hanbury. The sites include: Tatler, the Daily Mail/MailOnline/Mail on Sunday, the Evening Standard, the Mirror, the Sun, the Daily Express, and the Guardian. As reported by Vulture, the investigation found that 21 stories were deleted and six stories were edited post-publication to remove information about the rumored affair. The articles’ publishing dates ranged from 2019 to 2024.
The affair rumors have been circulating since 2019.
Both gossip sites and royal social media have speculated about an affair between the Marchioness of Cholmondeley and Prince William. With Kate Middleton’s absence from the public eye earlier this year, which was later found out to be due to her cancer diagnosis, speculations only got stronger as people assumed the alleged affair was true.
Rose has denied the rumors.
Earlier this year, Rose delivered a statement through her lawyers stating that “the rumors are completely false.” She even sent a legal notice to late-night host Stephen Colbert after he joked about the alleged affair on his live talk show.
“The kingdom has been all aflutter by the seeming disappearance of Kate Middleton. Well, now internet sleuths are guessing that Kate’s absence may be related to her husband and the future king of England, William, having an affair,” he’d said. “So I think we all know who the alleged other woman is. Say it with me: the Marchioness of Cholmondeley — what a beautiful name!”
Other stories featuring the Marchioness of Cholmondeley also have disappeared.
Years of UK media coverage about Rose have been deleted that aren’t connected to the affair rumors. Stories about the alleged feud between Kate and Rose have also been deleted or updated post-publication to remove any details or rumors regarding it.
Broken links from deleted stories still exist.
Although Vulture was unable to link to any of the mentioned deleted stories for legal reasons, they did report that broken links to the stories still exist in each publication and on the outlets’ social media accounts. Out of all of the news sites, the Guardian was the only one that responded to Vulture’s request for comment.
So where did the stories go?
Even though no clear answer exists for why the stories have been removed or updated, there’s always the assumption that Buckingham Palace pulls strings behind the scenes to control what kind of information is out there. Legal representatives for both Prince William and Rose have continued to deny all rumors of the alleged affair but have declined to provide any specific public statements about the information that has been deleted or edited post-publication.