14 DAY TRIAL // It’s not just Pippa Midletton that’s getting the Royal Family with their royal knickers in a twist, because the Duchess of Cambridge, Kate Middleton, is also offering them plenty of reasons to be unhappy with her. The Queen, for one, considers her a very poor dresser (still) and an excessive overspender.
And the Queen is not amused.
Kate is overseeing renovations to the 10-bedroom Anmer Hall house in Norfolk, England because, admittedly, she’s not that fond of living in London, especially now that she also has Prince George, her son, to think of.
She and husband Prince William have already decided they want to move to the countryside, with Kate ruling that the house in question first needed renovations before it could be lived in. Apparently, she failed to mention that to Queen Elizabeth. If she had, she would have probably gotten an earful about how she shouldn’t be so “flashy.”
“The queen is famously careful about not being flashy,” a source tells Life & Style magazine. “She’s shocked about Kate’s overspending. She thinks it doesn’t make Kate or the royals look good to be splashing out millions on redecoration.”
The estimated cost of the renovations is of about $2.5 million (€1.83 million), the report goes on to say, but that’s not the worst part of it: that would be the fact that the Queen deems most of those improvements useless, like the $800,000 (€588,516) bill on fresh landscaping and the new fireplaces that Kate ordered.
Moreover, The Queen considers Kensington Palace just perfect for them and is against them moving to the countryside.
Kate, on the other hand, finds it “like a fishbowl” and would like to have a place of her own to retire to, hence all her efforts of making Anmer Hall into a home.
“The Queen feels it’s important for William, Kate and [Prince] George to be based in London. But Kate is completely going against her wishes. It really gives them a lot of privacy,” royal expert Yvonne York explains for the same media outlet.
As you can see in the photo above, the cover of this week’s issue of the mag promises even more juicy gossip. Words like “bullied” and “tormented” are used quite freely in describing the way the Queen behaves towards the Duchess, so we’re made to believe that, in between criticizing her for fashion choices and criticizing her for the way she acts in public, the Queen is also giving Kate hell for her plans for the family home.
A girl can’t catch a break, not even when she’s Royal. Or especially when she’s part of the Royal Family.