The Duchess of Cambridge Is Too Blessed to Be Stressed

British society glossy Tatler recently released a new issue featuring the Duchess of Cambridge on the cover, declaring her “Catherine the Great” and promising to explain, “How the crisis made Kate the Kingmaker.” The accompanying report suggested that Kate is a bit frazzled lately, but handling Mexit just fine overall. However, in a rare statement to the press, Kensington Palace calls the piece a load of bollocks, or perhaps some other UK-specific synonym for annoyance that also means testes.

It’s unclear which part of the Tatler exposé their royal highnesses took issue with. Perhaps it was the part where anonymous sources said Kate was a great mom, or the section where the author ruminated on the idea that the future queen might not be as boring as an undressed boiled potato, after all. However, most likely, it is the section of the article suggesting Kate is experiencing human emotions in response to the mounting pressure of being all things to all people at all times:

“Kate is furious about the larger workload. Of course she’s smiling and dressing appropriately but she doesn’t want this,” an unnamed source told the Tatler. “She feels exhausted and trapped. She’s working as hard as a top CEO, who has to be wheeled out all the time, without the benefits of boundaries and plenty of holidays.”

The Queen and company were quick to correct this, as feelings have been verboten among the English aristocracy since at least the reign of Edmund Ironside, if not before: “This story contains a swathe of inaccuracies and false misrepresentations which were not put to Kensington Palace prior to publication,” a spokesperson said.

However, Tatler was quick to counter that Kensington Palace had plenty of time to refute claims that the Duchess possesses a normal range of human emotions prior to publication:

“Kensington Palace knew we were running the ‘Catherine the Great’ cover story months ago and we asked them to work together on it,” editor in chief of Tatler, Richard Dennen in a statement of his own. “The fact they are denying they ever knew is categorically false.”

Here is my unresearched, purely speculative conspiracy theory based solely on my own experiences with English culture, derived entirely from quarter-century-old novels: Kensington Palace, awash in bad press following the emigration of Prince Harry to America, is absolutely chuffed with the glowing review of Kate’s public appearances and released the rare statement to draw attention to the piece while performing pleasure in the time-honored English tradition of replacing an appropriate reaction with blustery discomfort.