Breaking News: Prince William to ‘leave Kate behind’ in 2025 royal duties….Read More

The Prince of Wales’ plans for 2025 are being formulated – and they won’t, reportedly, include the Princess of Wales.

You have to feel sorry for Kate, the Princess of Wales’ passport.

In whatever drawer it has been stashed, wedged in next to reams of sensible cotton underwear or forgotten in the back of a desk drawer full of loose paperclips and dry cleaning stubs for ceremonial robes (so hard to get the yolk of eggy soldiers out of ermine), the poor old thing has been left untouched for an age.

The bad news: It doesn’t exactly sound like it will be going anywhere – unlike Prince William’s passport, that is. In 2025, there could be a major split ahead, by which I mean that of the Waleses’ travel documents (won’t anyone think of all those empty pages?).

It was all the way back around this time in 2023 that the princess last travelled overseas with her husband and we don’t even have a single pic of that occasion to show for it. Somehow, the Waleses and their kids managed to stealthily sneak off for a snowy getaway to the French ski resort of Méribel without a single, blurry iPhone snap emerging (clearly the Catholic Church isn’t the only institution with a sideline in miracles).

My suggestion today – don’t hold your breath for that to change.

With this week’s painful restoration of workaday life and as we continue to find sand in the gusset of our swimmers, we have gotten fresh details about what the year ahead will look like for William and Kate – and they look set to go their own ways.

According to The Daily Mail’s royal editor Rebecca English, “William will undertake a ‘handful’ of solo foreign visits in the coming months, another sign of Catherine’s progress”.

Currently, “there are no plans – yet – for any full-scale foreign royal tour” for them together.

For those of you playing along at home, you’ll remember that the last time William and Kate did venture forth to do some extended touring of foreign locales and practise their wave in other time zones was in March 2022 when they arrived in the Caribbean – and painfully learnt about this thing called Great Britain’s violent and oppressive colonial past in real time.

What is currently on the Kensington Palace cards, per English, are “shorter two- or three-day (overseas) visits” for the prince until he heads off to somewhere in South America for the Earthshot Prize in November.

However – pause for dramatic effect and some dialectic fancy footwork – “it is not denied (Kate) may join her husband on one short trip, should she feel up to it”.

Translation: If the Princess of Wales is feeling well enough, we might see her join the prince on one of these little mini-tours that are in the pipeline. That, however, will be the exception and not the rule.

“Everyone is adjusting the dial,” a source told the Mail.

So, looking ahead, prepare to largely see William and his trusty collection of everyman chinos being packed off to represent the UK in that strange and wondrous place called Abroad, to poorly paraphrase Clive James, on his own.

The first such occasion could even come as early as this month, when someone representing the royal family is likely to head to Poland to attend the 80th anniversary commemorations of the liberation of Auschwitz on January 27.

Not only at play in all of this is the Princess of Wales’ health, with her reportedly “making great strides in her recovery”, but the couple’s ongoing dedication to parenting the hell out of their kids. In practical terms that means, English reports, “the Waleses will strive to not be away from home extensively”.

Nor are we likely to start seeing more Kate out Kateing on British soil either, and English says that she has been told by multiple insiders that “we shouldn’t expect to see the Princess returning to full-time royal duties any time soon”.

“There is no huge reset button that’s going to be hit in January,” a royal source has said.

(Sad. I bet the royal family only has the very best in the way of buttons. Did Fabergé ever make one?)

Instead, 2025 is shaping up to be the year of ‘maybe’, with the Palace reportedly deciding that, when it comes to Kate, options will be kept firmly open and hard and fast commitments avoided.

Take the immovable pieces on the royal calendar like Trooping the Colour and Remembrance Day.

As a source told English, “It’s about pace. I think she would also prefer to confirm only when she is certain she can attend events, rather than get anyone’s hopes up and then have to pull out”.