• Royal author Christopher Andersen, whose new book is titled Kate!, claims the Princess of Wales was the last holdout pushing for peace between Prince William and Prince Harry — and stuck with it longer than anyone expected
• The breaking point, per Andersen: Harry’s May 2025 BBC interview, in which he said he’d like to reconcile "because we just don’t know how long [my father] has to live" — a comment that Andersen says felt deeply hurtful to King Charles and Kate, both of whom were dealing with cancer diagnoses at the time
• "That kind of statement can be very hurtful to somebody who doesn’t really want to consider their own mortality and is battling cancer," Andersen told Fox News Digital
• Prior to that interview, Kate had persisted through Harry’s memoir Spare (2023), its physical altercation claims, and years of public criticism — Andersen says "she would not give up" until the BBC moment
• William and Kate recently marked their 15th wedding anniversary, a milestone that has brought fresh retrospectives on their relationship — including William’s whispered words at the altar: "You look lovely. You look beautiful"

For years, Kate Middleton was described as the quieter voice pushing for peace in the rift between Prince William and Prince Harry. She held that position through a lot — through Spare, through the physical altercation claims, through the Netflix series, through the transatlantic back-and-forth that defined the brothers’ estrangement. But there was a last straw. Royal author Christopher Andersen says he knows what it was.

Andersen, whose new book Kate! examines the Princess of Wales’ rise as one of the most influential figures in the House of Windsor, told Fox News Digital that Kate’s patience finally broke after Harry’s May 2025 interview with the BBC.

In that interview, Harry said he would "love reconciliation" with his family, adding: "There’s no point continuing to fight any more, life is precious. I would love reconciliation. I do not know how much longer my father has." The comment was framed as an olive branch. Andersen says it landed as something closer to a wound.

"The final straw came really shortly after the king was diagnosed with cancer, when Harry essentially said, ‘I’d like to mend fences because we just don’t know how long my father has to live,’" Andersen told Fox News Digital. "Well, that kind of statement can be very hurtful to somebody who doesn’t really want to consider their own mortality and is battling cancer."

King Charles had been diagnosed with cancer in early 2024. Kate had her own cancer diagnosis that same year. "It was hurtful to both of them," Andersen said. "To both King Charles and Kate, who were battling cancer and thinking about their own mortality."

How Long She Kept Trying

What makes the claim notable is the timeline Andersen lays out. He says Kate persisted well past the point where most observers assumed any hope of reconciliation was dead. "She would not give up," Andersen told SheKnows. "Even after Harry threw William under the bus in his memoir Spare, she was willing to keep trying. And the final break came."

Spare, published in January 2023, included Harry’s account of a physical confrontation with William in 2019 in which Harry claimed he was knocked to the ground. It also contained pointed criticism of Kate’s role in the family’s tensions. That wasn’t enough to make Kate walk away, per Andersen. The BBC interview was.

A Marriage Now in Its 15th Year

The coverage comes as William and Kate mark their 15th wedding anniversary — a milestone that has prompted a wave of retrospectives on the couple. One widely circulated detail from the April 29, 2011 ceremony at Westminster Abbey: cameras caught William’s whispered reaction as Kate walked down the aisle. "You look lovely," he said. Then: "You look beautiful." Before the ceremony, he also greeted Kate’s father Michael Middleton with a quip — "We’re supposed to have just a small family affair" — as 1,900 guests looked on.

The couple’s earlier history has also resurfaced. William and Kate briefly split for two months during their university years in 2007. When Kate was spotted at a book launch shortly after the breakup and asked how she was doing, she offered a single word: "Fine." When pressed, she added: "Really, it’s fine." Then moved on.

The post Kate Middleton Finally Gave Up on Fixing William and Harry’s Relationship — and a Royal Author Says He Knows Exactly Why appeared first on Cream.

• Aston Villa beat Freiburg 3-0 in Istanbul to win the Europa League, their first European trophy in 44 years
• Prince William was in the stands — and in the dressing room beforehand — as a lifelong Villa supporter
• Captain John McGinn joked the Prince should “get his credit card out” for the post-match celebrations
• Manager Unai Emery won the Europa League for a record fifth time, cementing his legendary status at the club
• Villa have already secured Champions League football next season, with a victory parade planned through Birmingham

Prince William wiped away tears of joy inside Istanbul’s Tupras Stadium on Wednesday night as Aston Villa ended a 44-year wait for European glory, crushing Freiburg 3-0 to lift the UEFA Europa League title in one of the most emotional nights in the club’s history.

The Prince of Wales — a lifelong, genuinely devoted Villa fan — was among an estimated 20,000 claret-and-blue supporters packed into the stadium in Istanbul. He pumped his fists, hugged those around him, and had his phone out capturing the moment as captain John McGinn lifted the trophy amid an explosion of confetti. By the time the final whistle blew, he was in tears.

“Amazing night!! Huge congratulations to all the players, team, staff and everyone connected to the club!” William posted on X afterwards. “44 years since the last taste of European silverware! Special shout out to Boubacar Kamara who has been out injured but is such an integral part of our team and helped lay the foundations of this success. UTV! VTID W.”

He had been in the dressing room before kick-off, too — not as a royal dignitary doing a photo op, but as a fan who simply couldn’t stay away. McGinn confirmed as much with a grin.

“He’s a classy guy. He was in the dressing room before the game and he’s a massive Villa fan so he was never going to miss it,” the captain told TNT Sports. “He’s just a normal guy, it’s great to have his support. Hopefully it continues — and tonight he can have a couple of drinks with us and maybe get his credit card out at the end of the night!”

Goals, Glory, and a Manager Who Makes History

The match itself was a masterclass. Youri Tielemans broke the deadlock in the 41st minute, rifling home an exquisite volley from Morgan Rogers’ floated delivery. Three minutes into first-half stoppage time, Emi Buendia curled a left-footed beauty from outside the box that arched into the top corner. The place — and the future king — went absolutely wild.

Rogers completed the rout in the 58th minute, sliding in at the near post to divert Buendia’s cross over the line. Game over. History made.

“We had a great season and to top it off with this is amazing,” Tielemans said. For manager Unai Emery, it was a record-extending fifth Europa League title — three consecutive wins with Sevilla from 2014-16, one with Villarreal in 2021, and now this with Villa. He’s now led three clubs with ‘Villa’ in the name to the trophy, a quirk that hasn’t been lost on anyone. His players carried him on their shoulders through the celebrations.

“This trophy makes us very proud, but we are not going to stop,” Emery said. “I’m always very grateful for Europe. For every competition, but especially the Europa League. We played it in a very serious way this year — so, so focussed. And the players, they showed their wishes. I was telling them: we need wishes, we need seriousness in this competition. To show on the field that you are the protagonist — and they did it.”

It’s also personal redemption for the Spaniard, who was fired by Arsenal in November 2019 despite having taken them to the Europa League final that same year — a final they lost to Chelsea. He doesn’t lose these anymore.

What This Means for Villa — and for McGinn

For Aston Villa, the magnitude of Wednesday night is hard to overstate. This was the club’s first major trophy since the League Cup in 1996 — a 30-year drought — and their first European silverware since the European Cup and Super Cup in 1982. McGinn became the first Villa captain to lift a European trophy since Dennis Mortimer did it 44 years ago.

“It means a lot,” McGinn said. “To be here, in 2026, as captain of Aston Villa is incredible. It’s the proudest night of my career. Being 31, in my first European final, I’ve seen my mates Grealish and Robertson win. It’s my turn. It’s so special, I’ll cherish every minute.”

He paused, then added something that put the whole journey into perspective. “I can’t believe it to be honest. What we’ve been through as a club — this club was close to being in a right bad way seven years ago. V Sports bought the club over. Their one remit was to get it back to the Premier League and back to the levels of before. Tonight was everything we built coming together.”

When Emery arrived in 2022, Villa were one place above the relegation zone. Now they’ve qualified for the Champions League through the Premier League and just won Europe’s second-biggest club trophy. “With this manager in charge, anything’s possible,” McGinn said simply.

Why William Has Always Been One of Them

The prince’s presence in Istanbul wasn’t a PR move or a royal obligation — it was the culmination of a genuine, decades-long love story with the club. William has spoken openly about how he came to support Villa during his school days in Berkshire, deliberately choosing a team that went against the grain.

“All my friends at school were either Man United fans or Chelsea fans and I didn’t want to follow the run of the mill teams,” he told the BBC in 2015. “I wanted to have a team that was more mid-table that could give me more emotional rollercoaster moments.”

He was born 26 days after Villa’s European Cup final win against Bayern Munich on May 26, 1982 — the very trophy being celebrated 44 years on. His connection to the club runs deeper than most fans realize. He attended the 2019 Championship play-off final win against Derby County, sat with fans in a red beanie at an FA Cup game back in 2000, and has visited Villa’s training ground on multiple occasions. Manager Emery confirmed as much after the win against Bayern in the Champions League this season.

“He’s supporting us but not just now,” Emery said. “Two years ago when we were not in Europe he was coming to our training ground, watching the session, having lunch with us. He’s very humble with us. We appreciate a lot his visits to us.”

Sports commentator Clive Tyldesley, speaking at a Windsor Castle investiture ceremony just last week, put it plainly: there is “nothing manufactured” about William’s dedication to Villa. “It’s clearly a passion of his,” Tyldesley said, adding that the royal’s commitment establishes “a genuine link between the family and the national sport.”

William was named Patron of the Football Association in 2024, taking over a role previously held by Queen Elizabeth II. He presented the FA Cup trophy to Manchester City earlier this month and attended Euro 2024 with his son George. Football is clearly close to his heart in every form.

But nothing — not the FA Cup, not the Euros — quite looked like Wednesday night in Istanbul. The future king of England, sitting behind former Villa defender Ahmed Elmohamady, in tears as his team made history.

Back in Birmingham, thousands of fans packed the Utilita Arena to watch on giant LED screens, with beer flying into the air the moment Tielemans’ volley hit the net. Villa have announced an open-top bus victory parade through the city centre on Thursday.

Forty-four years of waiting. One unforgettable night. And a prince who never stopped believing — even when it was easier not to.

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• A new biography claims Queen Camilla once called Kate Middleton “too common” to marry Prince William
• Author Christopher Andersen says Camilla “did object” to Kate’s working-class roots and lack of aristocratic blood
• Camilla allegedly viewed Kate’s mother Carole as a “gauche opportunist” and someone who knew how to scheme
• William reportedly erupted when Camilla asked Kate to change the spelling of her name from Catherine to Katherine
• Andersen says the rivalry hasn’t fully disappeared, but Camilla softened after both she and Kate faced cancer diagnoses in their families

Before Kate Middleton became the Princess of Wales — before the wedding watched by billions, before three children, before a cancer diagnosis that made the whole world hold its breath — she had to survive Queen Camilla.

That’s the portrait painted in “Kate!”, the new biography from royal author Christopher Andersen, which landed last week and is already stirring up a fresh round of palace intrigue. According to Andersen, Camilla was once one of Kate’s “fiercest critics” — and actively objected to the match between her stepson and the woman who would eventually become one of the most admired royals in the world.

“She did not think she was up to snuff, as it were,” Andersen told Fox News Digital. “She was below the salt. She had no aristocratic blood.”

The objection, Andersen writes, was rooted in something Camilla took seriously: bloodlines. Camilla herself is the granddaughter of a baron and a descendant of the Stuart royal line, which ruled England from 1603 to 1714. Her great-grandmother, Alice Keppel, was King Edward VII’s mistress — a connection Andersen says Camilla “had always taken immense pride in.” She had spent her entire life moving in royal circles. Kate, by contrast, was the daughter of former British Airways employees who went on to build a successful party supply business.

To Camilla, that gap was disqualifying. Andersen writes that she preferred an aristocrat with “homegrown blue blood” over “a descendant of coal miners whose mother had grown up in public housing and once worked as a flight attendant.”

The ‘Waity Katie’ Years Were Rougher Than Anyone Knew

Kate and William met at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland in 2001, and what followed was nearly a decade of on-again, off-again courtship — the stretch the tabloids gleefully dubbed the “Waity Katie” years. Andersen argues that those years weren’t just about William’s reluctance. The palace itself, he claims, wasn’t exactly rolling out the welcome mat.

“The palace didn’t really want her,” Andersen said. “People like Camilla didn’t want her because they felt that she was too common to be the wife of a future king. And, of course, the press was vicious in England, portraying her family as a bunch of louts.”

Camilla, according to the book, had long championed the “highborn beauties with hyphenated names” who circled William — the same way she and Baroness Tryon had once handpicked Lady Diana Spencer for Prince Charles. She saw herself, Andersen writes, as “the mistress of a king, not a queen” — a woman who understood how these things were supposed to work.

Her suspicion extended to Kate’s mother, Carole Middleton, whom she allegedly viewed as a “gauche opportunist.” A former mistress of Charles told Andersen that Camilla’s approach to potential rivals was characteristically calculating: “It’s really all about keeping your friends close and your enemies closer. It’s her way of keeping her eye on you.”

A St. James’ Palace staffer put it more plainly: “Maybe she felt threatened by Kate, or perhaps more by William and Kate as a team.”

The Name-Change Request That Made William Fume

One episode from the book stands out as a window into just how tense things got. After Kate and William married in April 2011, Camilla and Charles each had a royal monogram — interlocking Cs beneath a crown. The concern, Andersen writes, was that a third royal cypher also featuring a C would be “overkill.” The solution proposed? That Kate change the spelling of her name from “Catherine” to “Katherine.”

William did not take it well.

“Offended by yet another command essentially aimed at placating Camilla, a fuming William replied on his wife’s behalf,” Andersen writes. The request was “insulting,” William told his father — not just to Kate but to her entire family. The suggestion was dropped.

Even after the wedding, Andersen says, the sniping didn’t stop. “There was a lot of sniping from the sidelines, much of it coming from Camilla’s camp,” he said. “During the first few years of William and Kate’s marriage, Kate got a lot of criticism fed to the press for not working as hard as the rest of the royal family.”

But Kate, by most accounts, simply refused to give anyone ammunition. “She somehow, as the Brits like to say, never put a foot wrong,” Andersen told Fox News Digital. “And today, as a result, she’s pretty much universally admired.”

Cancer Changed Things — But the Competition Never Fully Went Away

The book’s most surprising claim may be about what finally softened Camilla’s stance: cancer. When King Charles was diagnosed in early 2024 and Kate revealed her own cancer diagnosis shortly after, Andersen says something shifted between the two women — or at least between Camilla and her feelings about her daughter-in-law.

“Charles and Kate were always fond of each other, but in the wake of being told that they had cancer, they really bucked up each other’s spirits,” Andersen explained. “Camilla recognizes that and has said that Kate is really the one who can make Charles laugh, and she appreciates that. They’re always hugging and kissing, laughing and joking. They’re very, very close. And Camilla is grateful for all that Kate has done to lift her husband’s spirits.”

Kate announced she was in remission in January 2025. Andersen notes she has since scaled back her royal schedule — “she has good days, she has bad days” — prioritizing her health and her three children: Prince George, 12, Princess Charlotte, 11, and Prince Louis, 8.

Still, Andersen isn’t suggesting all is perfectly harmonious behind palace walls. “There’s still competition,” he said. “That is really what makes the whole show. That’s how the monarchy functions: this competition among all the competing camps. Their staffs are constantly feeding information to the press, constantly trying to grab the spotlight for their particular royal.”

Buckingham Palace declined to comment on the book, with a spokesperson telling Fox News Digital: “We don’t comment on such books.” Reps for Kensington Palace also did not respond to requests for comment.

“It’s just astounding,” Andersen said of Kate, “that she’s been able to not only survive all this, but also flourish within the royal family.”

The post Camilla Called Kate ‘Too Common’ to Marry William appeared first on Cream.

• King Charles reportedly used his solo U.S. trip to meet Donald Trump as a deliberate show of authority over Prince William.
• A source claims Charles finds William’s eagerness to take power “offensive” and wants his son to “bide his time.”
• William is said to be furious over what he sees as a broken promise — that some power would be handed to him.
• The Prince of Wales is also reportedly blocking Prince Andrew from getting a private audience with the King.
• Charles, 77, is battling cancer but has shown no signs of stepping back from his royal duties.

King Charles III is not going anywhere — and he wants Prince William to know it.

The 77-year-old monarch, who is continuing his duties despite an ongoing cancer battle, reportedly made a pointed statement last month when he traveled to the United States to meet with President Donald Trump — without his eldest son by his side. According to insiders, that trip wasn’t just diplomacy. It was a message.

“Charles has made it clear he’s still very much the top dog, and that William needs to know his place,” a source told In Touch Weekly.

The same insider says Charles views any perceived impatience from his son as not just premature — but disrespectful. Having spent decades waiting in the wings himself before Queen Elizabeth II’s death in September 2022 finally brought him to the throne, Charles apparently expects William, 43, to demonstrate the same kind of restraint.

“His message for William is that he needs to bide his time and show patience and respect instead of chomping at the bit to unseat him,” the source added.

A Promise William Feels Was Broken

What’s making this particularly raw for the Prince of Wales, according to sources, is the sense that he was led to believe things would be different by now.

“He was promised that some power would be ceded to him,” an insider said. “Instead, his father is clearly on this mission to stamp his authority on the monarchy.”

That gap between expectation and reality is reportedly fueling real tension. The situation is said to be “not going over well” with William, who is described as “stomping his feet over what he sees as a bait-and-switch” situation. And the frustration isn’t just about timing — it’s about direction.

“It really hits a nerve because he doesn’t approve of the way his father is handling things,” the source said. “That’s ultimately at the core of William’s anger.”

One flashpoint: Charles’s reported leniency toward his disgraced brother, Prince Andrew. William has made no secret of his feelings that Andrew — who stepped back from royal duties following his association with Jeffrey Epstein — should not be welcomed back into the fold. And when Andrew reportedly began pushing for a private meeting with the King, William moved to block it.

William Draws a Hard Line on Andrew

According to reporting from Rob Shuter’s Naughty But Nice Substack, the Prince of Wales is actively working to prevent his uncle from getting that audience — and he’s not being subtle about it.

“William controls the room — and Andrew isn’t getting in without answers. William has drawn a hard line. No transparency, no meeting. It’s that simple,” a source told the outlet.

The sticking point, per insiders, is that Andrew has refused to explain what the meeting would even be about. “He won’t brief aides, he won’t loop in family — he’ll only speak directly to the King,” a source said. William, apparently, isn’t having it. “There’s no path back with William in charge. He’s not negotiating — he’s enforcing.”

It’s a striking dynamic — the heir apparent wielding real influence over palace access, even as the King himself reportedly finds his son’s broader ambitions offensive. Charles allegedly bristles at the idea that William is so visibly, eagerly waiting for the crown to change hands.

For now, the King’s position appears firm. He’s still working, still traveling, still very much in charge. And if his solo trip to Washington was meant to underscore that point, it seems to have landed exactly as intended.

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