Don't Call Her Kate Middleton

0:01Princess Kate gets an apology from the BBC Gill and Maxwell's emails about an Andrew Massage Emerge and Harry and Meghan are at loggerheads with the Kardashians. I'm Jack Royston, Newsweek's Chief Royal Correspondent, and this is Newsweek's Royal Report. Hello listeners and welcome to the show. Now, the Princess of Wales has been referred to as Kate Middleton by the BBC, causing the fury of her fans and also leading to the BBC issuing an apology to Kate. Now, that might seem completely bizarre to many viewers who just simply refer to her as Kate Middleton in their ordinary lives all the time. Because of course, most people do.

0:42And we know this for a fact, because Google Trends data confirms that overwhelmingly, the majority of search terms about the Princess of Wales use the phrase Kate Middleton. It is, however, not actually her name, or at least it hasn't been her name since she married William. It's her maiden name. Middleton is the family name. But the minute she married Prince William, she became initially the Duchess of Cambridge. She also usually does use Catherine. I mean, William has called her Kate on camera before in front of her and she didn't object, including in the engagement interview that they did in 2010.

1:16But since succession, since Charles became king in 2022, she has also been the Princess of Wales. Now, the view among many supporters of Kate is that her correct title, her correct form is Catherine, Princess of Wales. Now, actually, that's not strictly completely true either. And it's not what Kensington Palace call her. It's extremely rare for them to use that styling. They have used it before when they put out video messages that Kate released about her cancer treatment, her chemotherapy back in 2024. But the overwhelming majority, like 99 % of Kensington Palace press releases call her her royal highness the princess of wales um but you know what's in a name well quite a lot actually to some people and so what happened basically was kate went to armistice day she had a solo engagement up in staffordshire in the north of england um and she was at the um national memorial arboretum um observing two minute silence with veterans um and you know listening to the last post and doing all of those um respectful things that we do every year in britain now american viewers will know as Veterans Day, we call it Armistice Day in Britain, recognizing the moment that the armistice agreement that ended the First World War was signed on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918.

2:38Now, the BBC in their coverage and their kind of rolling, breaking 24-hour news coverage was jumping about from event to event. And this is what the presenter said. We'll take you to the Arboretum in Staffordshire. As we said there, Kate Middleton attending that ceremony let's have a listen in so clearly used Kate Middleton instead of the Princess of Wales now there was one particular person on X whose post whose tweets about it just went really really viral seen by tons and tons and tons of people and that was an author called Adrian Hilton who wrote who posted the clip and wrote just BBC News on Armistice Day casually announcing the arrival of Kate Middleton.

3:17And it blew up into a great big outrage against the BBC. And it was a really, really awkward time for the Beeb because they were in the middle of a massive argument about BBC impartiality about Donald Trump and Jan 6. They had been accused, BBC Panorama had been accused of editing the tapes of Donald Trump's comments leading up to the Jan 6 Capitol siege. They've actually apologised Trump. Trump's threatened to sue. He says he's going to sue the BBC for$5 billion. BBC is saying they're going to fight it, that, you know, they've apologized to him, but it's not actionable. It's a whole mess. I suspect Trump will lose if he does file the lawsuit because he seems to be trying to sue in America.

3:57But that's all by the by. The point is that the context in Britain for this whole thing blowing up was people on the right basically saying that the BBC was full of kind of left wing people and that it had a deeply ingrained institutional bias. Now, left-wing staff in particular have said that's crazy, it's not true, and if anything, the institutional pressure comes from the right, because that's where the argument is. But, you know, this is what the BBC's apology to Kate eventually said. During our coverage of memorials to commemorate Armistice Day, we mistakenly referred to Catherine Princess of Wales as Kate Middleton.

4:32These were errors during hours of live broadcasting for which we apologise. guys. Throughout our Armistice Day coverage, more broadly, we refer to Catherine by her correct title. And that is one interesting thing, because it's actually, like I said, not what Kensington Palace call her. And there's several different layers to this, one of which is that there is actually a reason why media organisations constantly get themselves in a muddle over this issue. And full disclosure, at Newsweek, there was a time when we did call her Kate Middleton two. Now, we actually changed our house style in 2024.

5:07And now we call her Princess Kate, which is also not strictly completely correct. But a big part of the reason this has been an issue is because of search engine optimization. And so all news articles written for the internet basically have to deal with this concept of search engine optimization. And nobody searches for Her Royal Highness, the Princess of Wales on Google. Everybody searches for Kate Middleton. So our particular approach now at Newsweek is that we've taken a portion of the name that people know her by, Kate, and we've married that with recognition of her formal royal title, the Princess of Wales.

5:43But if we were to call her, I mean, if we were to take, for example, the palaces form, Her Royal Highness, the Princess of Wales, that's 40 characters long. And when you put a search term into Google, the search page will only show you the first 55 characters of the headline. After that, it just reduces it to dot dot dot and the person doing the searching can't see any more of it so a really really long-winded name and headline makes it very difficult to tell readers what the story is actually about and if you imagine for example that you're a story might be about Kate and Meghan you know by the time you've written a royal highness the princess of Wales and Meghan the duchess of Sussex that's all you've got to play around with with your headline so even news organizations that are really supportive of Kate and love Kate and, you know, have jumped off the fence and really aren't impartial about it at all and, you know, completely adore her, still don't actually call her by the official title that Kensington Palace use because it's just not unfortunately practical to do it.

6:45The other issue is that, you know, the purpose of language is communication and the essence of communication is the person you're communicating with understanding what you're saying. And this is particularly a factor as you cross the Atlantic from Britain into America. It's much, much less well known that she is in fact Catherine and Princess of Wales. And like I said, you know, William has called her Kate before. It's not that she's never been called that. But the key thing here is it started to get political in Britain. And this is a really important aspect of it to understand. But the underlying question, which I'm going to come to in a minute, is does it play well or badly for Kensington Palace and the monarchy to get upset about this?

7:30And I need to stress at this point, there is no sign they actually have complaint. I'm not aware of any complaint. The complaints came from supporters of the monarchy and supporters of the princess, not from the palace. And I've never once heard William or Kate express any kind of preference or, you know, offense taken beyond the fact that William nowadays does generally call her Catherine. So with those caveats in mind, here is a little pricey of how it got so political. So Kate fans have been talking about this subject for years and have been saying, have been, you know, taking it up on Twitter, on social media with journalists who call her Kate Middleton and saying it's disrespectful and saying you must call her Catherine Princess of Wales.

8:20This has been happening for years. But then in 2024, Kate experienced some health problems and she had abdominal surgery and that abdominal surgery led to a diagnosis of cancer and she began chemotherapy. But the palace didn't tell people that initially, as many people may well, of course, remember. But just to recap, there was this whole period where Kate was out of the limelight and people didn't know why and so they were posting all of this stuff on twitter saying with the hashtag where is kate middleton now some of this was being stoked up by supporters of harry and megan who probably knew perfectly well that using kate middleton instead of katherine princess wells was going to upset kate's supporters they probably did and you know they probably were being mischievous when they did that but needless to say you know millions of people who had no idea that that would be in any way considered offensive by supporters of the princess repeated and retweeted and posted their own tweets using that hashtag.

9:19So, you know, even down to Kim Kardashian was one of the people who posted, where is Kate Middleton? And so around about that time, British news organizations who had continued to themselves to call her Kate Middleton for years, even after succession, even after she became the Princess of Wales, did this big about turn and started calling her Princess Kate in order to signal, or in some cases the Princess of Wales, in order to signal the fact that they were on Kate's side and that they were kind of taking a stance against the online trolls. Now Newsweek is impartial. If you want to love Kate, go love Kate.

9:54If you want to love Meghan, go love Meghan. I'm not here to tell you which side to be on. I'm simply here to cover these issues. But Newsweek did at that time recognize the fact that obviously Kate Middleton was not actually her name and so we decided to also change our stance and call her princess kate too but this is where it gets really complicated and potentially difficult for the palace is that deep down i think we all do kind of know that what is being demanded here is not accuracy actually at all as evidenced by the fact that catherine princess of wales is actually also not the correct formal title.

10:36What's being asked for here, really, if we're brutally honest about it, is fealty. It's respect. It's a sign of reverence, a performative show of reverence. And that is where this could enter really, really dangerous territory for the monarchy, because it's at risk of making it a culture war. And the royals have only just got out from underneath the last culture war, which was about Harry and Meghan. And they kind of like, they took a real battering during the intercontinental warfare with Harry and Meghan, but they just about scraped through having lost a load of support. And the absolute last thing they need now is to just dive straight back in to another cultural war this time about Kate.

11:16And actually, this has come up at the perfect time of year to give an example of how this could go wrong for the monarchy if it takes off and becomes a really kind of thorny debate, which is its remembrance. And there used to be something in Britain that you don't really hear about anymore. But around about 10 years ago, maybe 10, 15 years ago, there was some, this phrase was always being bandied about, which was poppy fascism. Now, the concept of poppy fascism was a reaction to stories in the tabloid press, particularly the right-wing papers, which were kind of trying to call out or cancel or, you know, attack people who didn't wear the red poppy to symbolise their support for remembrance.

12:04So the Royal British Allegiance charity that the Queen was patron of, big supporter of them, and the royals are really supportive of, they collect money every year for veterans and their families. And they do it under what's called the poppy appeal. you pay some money to you know you donate some money and then you get your little red poppy that you wear on your lapel and people who are going on tv particularly on the bbc not wearing poppies and were getting torn to pieces in the paper in the papers in the british press and eventually it happened for a period of time from predominantly right-wing people um who were very kind of supportive of the armed forces criticizing left-wing people who are a bit more kind of peace and love kind of vibes.

12:43But eventually, left-wing people got sick of that. And so they started to mount a fight back and they coined this term poppy fascism to say, don't kind of, you know, force me to wear a poppy if I don't want to, blah, blah, blah. And what happened was it started to create this really toxic atmosphere around the whole concept of remembrance and the whole concept of the poppy appeal. And some bright, spark, clever thinking person with, you know, nous and good instincts at the Royal British Legion realised that this was not a good situation for them. And that actually they'd all, you know, they had public opinion on their side anyway.

13:22There was nothing particularly to be gained by this process. And, you know, they were not the instigators of it anyway. And they issued a public statement. I think it was a letter, actually a kind of open letter saying, please don't admonish people for not wearing poppies because it's that's not what we're about that's not who we are and it's not what we do it's everybody's individual decision whether they want to wear a poppy or not and after they did that it stopped people and actually left when people would continue to complain about it for a period of time afterwards even though it wasn't happening anymore the papers actually did listen and they stopped you know pouring manure over people who didn't wear poppies on television in November.

14:03And that detoxified it and the cultural war went away. But if you are determined, if one side in a cultural war is determined to fight, eventually the other side will fight back, you know, as sure as night follows day. And it happens both ways around. You know, when left-wing people start cultural wars, if they fight them and fight them and fight them and fight them, eventually the right fight back. They just get sick of it and they'll go to war. And the same happens from the left. You know, if the right pick a cultural war subject and they start trying to cancel people and call them out, if they fight and fight and fight and fight, eventually the left will fight back and the whole issue will become toxic.

14:36And that is not what the palace needs. So, you know, I just want to reiterate, I've said it already, I want to say it again, like William and Kate were not the source of this outrage and nor was Kensington Palace. So the palace have not actually at this point done anything wrong. But if this blows up again, look, who knows what Kate really thinks about being called Kate. Maybe she doesn't like it, maybe it annoys her, But she has, I think there's real sense in the fact that she hasn't publicly got upset or angry or annoyed about this. Like, I think it shows real maturity, restraint and an understanding that many, many, many people, you know, there are millions of people out there who would go out and call her Kate Middleton, who love her and adore her and respect her and are not trying to show any disrespect.

15:23They just know her as Kate Middleton. It's how they've always known her. And it's partly a product of the fact that Kate and William had a really long courtship, you know, a really long period leading up to their marriage. So if you take Diana, she was Lady Diana Spencer. The public knew her for about five minutes and then she married Charles and became the Diana Princess of Wales. She became Princess Diana. You know, she was called Princess Diana. She was not particularly called Her Royal Highness the Princess of Wales in most headlines in newspapers, even back in the days before SEO. She was called Princess Diana, which was nice and neat and short.

15:57So, you know, the palace are being restrained and mature here, and they're understanding the fact that for the overwhelming majority of people who, you know, might accidentally or unknowingly use Kate Middleton, there's no disrespect implied or intended. but also if it takes off if it starts snowballing and it turns into a massive public toxic culture war then the palace do actually have a playbook they can fall back on which is the one that the Royal British Legion used to defuse the bomb of the kind of poppy fascism debate 10-15 years ago so they can know if this starts to turn toxic hopefully they'll be able to see that actually it's not in the interests of the monarchy to, to, to, you know, dig your heels in and have a massive war over whether she's Kate or Catherine.

16:49Um, and it really is in the interest of the monarchy to just like value and appreciate and respect the, um, huge amounts of love and adoration that people all over the world feel for Kate. Um, and you know, I think the only kind of point, a further point I'd make really is that, um, actually like this reinforces the fact that time and time and time again, the kind of culture wars and social political conflicts that exist in society find their way to the monarchy. Like the monarchy is a magnet for these kinds of, for identity politics, really, whichever side of the debate you're on. You know, for left-wing people, the monarchy was a symbol of inequality in society.

17:34It was a symbol of Britain's historic role in the slave trade. To the right, the monarchy is something to be revered, but there is a bit of an instinct there to also castigate people who don't revere it. But whatever happens, it's never been a positive thing for the royals to get sucked into a culture war because the royals are at their best when they appeal to the broadest possible church. You know, they are their natural place in society is to be apolitical because they're paid for by all of us for a start. And, you know, the king is head of state. He's not just the head of a kind of major institution.

18:16He's the head of state of the entire country. But also, you know, they can't jump off the fence on political issues. They're not meant to bat for one side or another. though right-wing people may instinctively feel that they do, but also actually, you know, sometimes they can be a little more to the left on certain issues. And that's always been the case dating back decades, dating back to the 1970s when Charles was, you know, there were big, really toxic debates about immigration in Britain back in the 1970s and Charles wanted his projects to, and this is stated plainly in the authorised biography that he did with Jonathan Dimbleby in the 1990s, 1990s that he wanted to help what he termed immigrant communities you know inner city communities um and he wanted to support those people in those areas and so you know if the if right when people really force this issue they may wind up actually discovering things about the monarchy that um you know create all kinds of uh social turmoil and and political socio-political conflicts and and whatnot so the better thing is to let the monarchy do what it does best which is to sit in the middle and speak to both sides at the same time.

19:29Try to speak across the social political divide and not get caught up on don't sweat the small stuff. That's what it comes down to. Don't sweat the small stuff and just appreciate the fact that people love you whether they're calling you Kate or whether they're calling you Catherine. Oh and actually one more thing I'd say about it is for what it's worth many news organisations including Newsweek actually don't use the technically correct formal title for the king either because we call him King Charles III and we called Elizabeth Queen Elizabeth II. And actually internally within the palace, that's not what they're called.

20:00The king is called His Majesty the King. And even after death, that was what the queen was called in life. That's what Elizabeth was called in life. But even after death, she's referred to internally at the palace as Her Late Majesty the Queen to the point where that sometimes, in more casual informal conversations, they sometimes abbreviate that to HLMTQ, Her Late Majesty the Queen. So, you know, it's not just cake. There are other royal family members who are also referred to in a way that is technically not the official form and styling used by the monarchy and by the palace internally. And we do it at Newsweek.

20:33We refer to King Charles III because that's the Associated Press's house style. But my view personally is, you know, I don't actually think that's technically right. I mean, I would rather call him the king. But, you know, these things are not always a product of what we want as individual journalists. They're a product of having to have a system. And the reality, the pragmatic reality is that system has to take into account the industry demands and the demands of technology like search engines. But that is it for this section of The Royal Report, not the whole show. But on that note, I'll take a quick break.

21:07Before I do, just remember to rate and review The Royal Report on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you get your favourite shows, including, of course, we are now on YouTube. And when I'm back, Gillian Maxwell email about a massage makes for awkward reading for Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.

21:27Hello and welcome back to the show. Now, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor's biggest problem at the moment is probably the fact that the House and Senate have both voted through a bill to force the Department of Justice to release the Epstein files. Finally, after months and months and months. and Donald Trump has indicated he'll sign it. And so that means it will then be down to the DOJ whether to actually comply or whether to determine that there's some reason they can't, such as a recent investigation that Trump asked them to launch into Democrats related to Epstein. But if they do, you know, the big question for Andrew in the palace is what more could there be to come out that we don't already know about?

22:10and as if we needed reminding that there potentially could still be major bombshell revelations to come. There have been a whole load more emails in the past week. The House Oversight Committee dropped a kind of 10 ,000, 20 ,000 page dossier of emails and communications and filings and so on from the Epstein estate's kind of tranche of files. So the DOJ will have other stuff that's not in what the Epstein estate had. But this was the Epstein estate's, you know, kind of big collection of documentation. So even in that, we have had some bombshell new emails. And I'm going to go through a couple of them just to give an indication of where things stand.

22:57Of course, you know, there could be more. There could be other stuff. and it begs the question what is there on Prince Andrew's own email, on royal email service what do the palace have do they still have a record of all their emails dating back to whenever 2001, 2010, 2011 what do they have but this is some of what we've had come out so there's one that Gillian Maxwell sent in January 2015 now that's a significant date because that is when Virginia Jeffery who accused Andrew who said that she was sex trafficked by Epstein and Maxwell to London, New York and the US Virgin Islands to have sex with Andrew when she was 17 years old.

23:39Now, Andrew obviously denies those allegations and she sued him in 2021 and he settled in 2022 while denying liability. But that was not Virginia Jeffries' first lawsuit. She actually sued Epstein in Florida in 2015 and she filed those papers in January of that year. And that was the very first time that the actual allegation about her having been trafficked to London to have sex with Andrew came out. It wasn't the first article linking Andrew to Epstein. That was back in 2011. And Virginia actually did a newspaper interview back then too. But she didn't actually state this bit about being made to have sex with Andrew until 2015.

24:20So that had just come out. And days later, Ghislaine Maxwell sent this email to Epstein. I have to distance myself from you in statements too, and they need me to say I was not aware of massage with Andrew in my house. So I'm going to read that line again because people are paying close attention basically to the wording in this email, the specific phrase she uses. She says, and they need me to say I was not aware of massage with Andrew in my house. So in other words, she's saying I was not aware rather than that it didn't happen. And it's also quite interesting that she uses the word massage rather than saying, you know, we didn't sex traffic Virginia Jeffrey to London and make her have sex with Andrew.

25:06She says, I was not aware of massage in my house. These things they have to say along with meeting and rebutting those allegations. I need it ASAP. And, you know, this is private, it's a private email that she presumably didn't particularly expect would ever come out publicly. So I think that's probably what people are kind of, the conclusion people are drawing is that maybe there's a slight difference in tone to the private emails compared to some of the public denials and statements, you know, in, even in depositions, Guillaume Maxwell was scathing about Virginia and said she, you know, she was a liar basically and a fantasist as was Epstein and Epstein was in many private emails too but it is an interesting phrase it doesn't definitively mean I think some newspaper headlines have couched it in terms that she's confirmed to the fact that a massage took place I probably wouldn't go quite that far because it is you know if somebody's she very clearly wrote the email in a hurry because it's riddled with spelling mistakes she actually writes I needs it ASAP.

26:11So she obviously rattled it out. But, you know, it is a very interesting phrase for her to have used, and it doesn't reflect that well on Andrew. And it's also not the only one. Another one to come out in the past week, Epstein sent to his former publicist, and he wrote, the girl has fled the country with an outstanding arrest warrant. The DA, after she accused others, said in writing that she has no credibility. She was never 15 years old working for me. Her story made it seem like she first worked for Trump at that age and was met by Ghislaine Maxwell. Total horseshit. The Daily Mail paid her money.

26:50They admitted it with the statement that it took money to coax out the truth. Yes, she was on my plane. This is the significant bit in this Epstein email. Yes, she was on my plane. And yes, she had her picture taken with Andrew, as many of my employees have. so in other words Epstein there does like if the Gillen Maxwell wording was kind of 50-50 this does seem to be confirmation that he is saying in that email that the picture happened the picture of Andrew with his arm around Virginia was real that seems to be the implication of what Epstein's saying there and if that's true then Virginia's kind of 50 % of the way there really not least of all because Andrew has tried to pour cold water over that photo and imply that it was faked.

27:35He had said they seemingly launched an investigation into it and couldn't confirm one way or the other, but he certainly creates the idea that it wasn't real and says that he never met Virginia. So this is what Andrew said to Emily Maitlis on the BBC, BBC Newsnight in 2019. From the investigations that we've done, you can't prove whether or not that photograph is faked or not because it is a photograph of a photograph of a photograph. So it's very difficult to be able to prove it, but I don't remember that photograph ever being taken. And he went on, well, here's the problem. I've never seen Epstein with a camera in my life.

28:10And he said that some people might well wish to believe the photo, but the photograph is taken upstairs and I don't think I ever went upstairs in Gillan's house. And he said, I'm terribly sorry, But if I, as a member of the royal family, and I have a photograph taken, and I take very, very few photographs, I am not one to, as it were, hug. And public displays of affection are not something that I do. So that's the best explanation I can give you. And I'm afraid to say that I don't believe that photograph was taken in the way that has been suggested. So in other words, if that Epstein email is true and the photo is real and Virginia did have her photograph taken with Andrew, then that completely blows out of the water a really important part of Andrew's defence.