Worst possible moment: Kate Middleton ‘plotting coup’ against King Charles

Every December, you could nearly set your watch to it, some news site will run the same cockamamie story about how the royal family gets weighed before and after their Christmas lunch. Fiddle faddle. Codswallop. (It’s a tradition that Edward VII, when he wasn’t sticking in stamps and slaughtering birds by the thousand, reportedly got up.)

Still, December 25 is undoubtedly a real tent pole in the royal calendar, both a day redolent of all the main tenets of royalty – family, faith, a Clag-like adherence to tradition – and as one of the biggest marketing days of the year for Crown Inc. Those photos of les Windsors trooping in affable, rugged-up formation to St Mary Magdalene on the Sandringham Estate do double if not triple time and on one of the slowest news days.

Oh but this year, something – or more accurately someone’s – are threatening this carefully stage-managed bit of theatre. Play some vaguely ominous music and welcome to the stage Prince William and Kate, the Prince and Princess of Wales who are working on competing plans to those of King Charles.

The duo are “plotting” a “coup”, according to The Daily Beast’s outrageously well-sourced Tom Sykes, a scene that calls to mind Kate in jungle camo gear and a beret armed with a long metal pointer and a chalkboard as she explains the pincer movement.

It comes down to this – the Waleses are reportedly preparing to put their own large-format stamp on Christmas, all those decades of dusty practices and bolted-in customs be damned.

Expect, per Sykes, William and Kate to really use the holidays for not only a big shiny PR effort but to also throw a “rival Christmas party” which “will be notable for its studied informality” where the entire Middleton family will really make the most of a box of Marks & Spencer’s sausage roll party packs. (Well, I might have made up that last part.)

It’s going to be crackers at dawn at this rate.

Christmas, in the royal world, normally goes like this: At the heart of things is the 29-bedroom Sandringham House, where the extended family, all gambolling, cheery Tindalls and Yorkist cousins and their Naaaice Boy husbands, gather for joke gifts opened on Christmas Eve, thanks to their German forebears, before they all troop to church on the morning of the big day.

The same timetable and the same format has been in place since King Charles was in knee socks and there was a Cold War nuclear shelter next to the Sandringham coal shute. Tinned ham, anyone?

Only now the Waleses reportedly want to put their own mark on festivities with “royal Christmas customs beloved of generations of sovereigns … facing the chop due to King Charles’ health crisis.

It sounds like William and Kate are trying to stealthily shift the centre of gravity for Christmas Day to Anmer Hall, their 10-bedroom house in the same patch of Norfolk as Sandringham. They have, a friend of the prince and princess told the Beast, for years been running “a slightly covert, rival Christmas party at their house” however with the King still being treated for cancer, they are reportedly going to take their guerrilla celebration out of the shadows.

This year the Waleses’ own family celebration is “going to be much more obvious,” the friend told Sykes. William, after decades of gag plastic noses and Whoopie cushions and enough goose to overstuff a Prussian King is “enthusiastic about embracing Kate‘s much more normal conception of Christmas”.

One of the first things to also be axed under Operation: Figgy Pudding – the 184-year-old tradition that Kate thinks is “weird”. Ever since Queen Victoria married German wurst Prince Albert, the British royal family has adhered to some highly Teutonic traditions like unwrapping their pressies on Christmas Eve.

No more under the new Wales’ regime.

“Kate has always found the presents on Christmas Eve thing weird,” the friend of the prince and princess told the Beast. “It is definitely going to be got rid of when they are officially running things … You can bet your bottom dollar they will be doing proper presents for each other and the kids [at home] on Christmas Day.”

The Prince and Princess of Wales are not just planning on hosting an opposing do but reportedly also want to use December 25 to really drive home on what close terms they are with the ‘N’ word – normal.

A possibility – the Waleses using Christmas Day and them oh-so-ordinarily celebrating as an opportunity for a major bit of social media showmanship. Think some sort of warm and fuzzy video or carousel of family photos to really drive home just how down-to-Earth and normal the Wales family is.

Given that the King’s speech airs at 3pm on the day, should the Prince and Princess of Wales decide to stage their own counterprogramming and post shots of them at home fighting over the last pralines in the tin of Quality Street, then, “it’ll be an official coup attempt,” said the friend.

As a former courtier who has worked with William and Kate told the Beast: “A little social media of the family eating chocolate and watching TV would be a very effective way of showing how normal Christmas is at Anmer Hall compared to what we hear about at Sandringham”.

If the prince and princess did go down this alterna-December 25 route, it would amount to quite the unsubtle challenge to the King’s rule and could set up 2025 as a year that sees Buckingham and Kensington Palaces increasingly go head-to-head.

Maybe Kate should keep that beret handy. So, let them eat Quality Street – and prepare to see them man – or princess – the barricades.

Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.