Prince William has just touched down in South Africa, gearing up for the 2024 Earthshot Prize ceremony later this week.
And while there’s plenty of feel-good news to report here — like the nearly $2 million in prize money given to organizations trying to innovate our way out of a looming climate catastrophe — there’s one major fly in the public-relational-ointment: Kate’s not there.
Fascinatingly, the Princess of Wales’s physical absence from this trip to Africa might not even be down to her continued recuperation from her cancer diagnosis earlier this year. After all, she was conspicuously absent from last year’s Earthshot ceremony in Singapore.
The reason given then was that one parent needed to stay home with Prince George while he took some important exams. But, given the fact that Kate’s decision to wear a rented gown to the ceremony is the enduring public takeaway from the 2022 ceremony, you might wonder if that decision (and this one) had more to do with a desire to focus attention in a certain direction rather than concerns about a 10-year-old’s academic career.
However he got there, Prince William is front-and-centre and solo in South Africa this week. The Earthshot Prize, if you’re not familiar, is the future king’s Big Thing, his legacy-building attempt to harness the convening power of royalty to, well, literally save the Earth. It’s commendable, but not without controversy: According to The Times, two judges — Shakira and footballer Dani Alves — both stepped down last year after becoming embroiled in personal scandal.
There are also existential questions — like, are flashy prizes like this that reward individual effort just a distraction from the structural changes that need to happen? What about the carbon footprint of flying in all those people from around the world? — and family tittle-tattle, like the supposed fact that William making the environment his life’s mission is a bit of a slap in the face to his father (according to royals writer Omid Scobie), King Charles, who was ridiculed for years for his way-ahead-of-their-time views.
But back to South Africa! In the hours since William has landed, the Kensington Palace team has posted four times on Instagram from this incredibly photogenic part of the world, including a group selfie of the prince with attendees at the Earthshot Young Leaders program. Cannily, they’ve also seemed to try to get ahead of any “Where is Kate?” drama, courtesy of a statement that William released as he jetted off yesterday.
“Africa has always held a special place in my heart — as somewhere I found comfort as a teenager, where I proposed to my wife,” William said in a statement that managed, within a single sentence, to call upon two of the biggest draws in the Royal Family by invoking not just Diana (and the aftermath of her death,) but also his absent wife.
Framing this mention within the context of their love story, equally, is an interesting move. In reminding us of their proposal story — William, so the story goes, carried his mother’s engagement ring around in a backpack until he found the right moment to pop the question on a trip to Kenya — we’re being directed into the same narrative that played out in Kate’s “I’ve finished my chemo” video from a few months ago. Think about the loved-up, besotted couple, still as devoted today as they were over a decade ago, and not any of the nonsense that circulated at the height of the Kate Is Missing fever dream.
You can see why he did it: On an Instagram video posted this morning, showcasing Cape Town in all its glory as William arrives, one of the top comments is, “This would be a wonderful trip for kate [sic] too, but she doesn’t want to come with her husband.” (The reply section to that comment is a microcosm of royal discourse at the moment, by the way, complete with somehow dragging Meghan Markle’s name into it.)
Ditto the mention of his mother: Given her own connections to the continent, including her groundbreaking landmine awareness work in nearby Angola, it feels inevitable that the ghost of his mother might follow William on this trip if he didn’t acknowledge it — and then move on.
In many ways, it’s similar to what may have been done with another of William’s recent solo projects, the ITV documentary on his mission to end homelessness where he mentioned his estranged brother, Prince Harry, by name for the first time in years. Then, as now, mentioning the elephant in the room — but not explicitly addressing their absence — is a side-step that gets the expected headlines out of the way, and clears the deck for what the royal comms team would like us to focus on.
The reasons for their absence are very different, but the end desire is the same: William wants the spotlight. And, to be clear, it’s not a sinister thing that he might want the focus of this week to be on the work he’s doing and not on his wife, who is still under intense scrutiny and fervid interest right now.
