The Missing Wife of Windsor
Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble... Princess Kate has a body double?
An oft-photographed public figure needs to step out of view for a time to recover from a medical procedure. This absence is announced through official channels. The well-known face recedes for the designated period. Bing, bang, boom. Nothing to see here. Simple as. Unless, of course, said figure is Kate Middleton on leave from royal duties until Easter, to recuperate from abdominal surgery. Now, a hungry populace cries out for the Duchess of Cambridge. Until last week, Middleton had not been seen since December and, though well-within the “until Easter” timetable, whispers (and shouts) of “Whither Kate?” have wended through social media and the tabloids ever since. Rumors abound – divorce, cosmetic surgery, something even more sinister? And so, presumably in an attempt to shut everyone up, the AWOL Duchess engaged with the most quotidian of photo ops – a short drive with Mummy Dearest.
No one can accuse the British Royal Family of being canny readers of the modern moment. Even the most cloistered aristocrat should have guessed that an oddly grainy photo of a sunglass-sporting Middleton in a car would do little to assuage the concerns of millions of online Miss Marples eagerly working the case of the missing Princess of Wales. Rather than put the matter of Kate’s rest period to rest, the now-ubiquitous photo added fuel to the fire. In the minds of many (including some otherwise rational friends of Tossing Shirts), the woman behind that fuzzy Audi windshield is not Kate Middleton.
One might think that the matter would be settled now, after the release this morning of a clear, new family portrait (barely early enough to include in this column, but late enough that I had to scramble – a rude thing for the Windsors to do to an Irish American during this hallowed Saint Patrick’s Day Week). But then, one would underestimate the dogged devotion of social media sleuths. They’re already pushing back with counter arguments: There’s no wedding ring; the picture could have been taken at any time; look at the hands for signs of AI meddling. It seems the imposter cat is out of the bag, and nothing short of the Princess holding up a copy of today’s newspaper in a short proof-of-life video is going to do.
Famous figures throughout history, including Fidel Castro andHenry Kissinger, are alleged to have employed stand-ins, primarily for security purposes. One of the more whimsical hallmarks of Donald Trump’s presidency was the semi-annual rounds of speculation that the First Lady had been switched out with a double. But not all imitators have been in-house hires. In the late 1950s, the CIA hatched a dubious scheme to oust Indonesian president Sukarno. In an unimpeachable use of American tax dollars, the Agency shot a pornographic movie featuring a Sukarno look-alike in bed with a buxom blonde playing the part of a sexy Soviet asset. Shockingly, the skin-flick-coup-d’etat fizzled, though an amused Sukarno requested copies of the footage for his personal collection.
In our Google age, the notion that someone as well-recognized as Kate Middleton could convincingly engage an impersonator is quixotic at best. However, once upon a non-digital time, similar murmurs of a replacement at Windsor Castle swirled about. According to Bram Stoker’s 1910 non-fiction tome, Famous Imposters, the venerable Elizabeth I might have been less Virgin Queen than Boy In A Dress. Stoker relayed local lore, writing that a young Elizabeth was shipped off to the village of Bisley in care of a governess “for a change of air.” While there, the princess contracted a fever and died around 1544. King Henry VIII, Elizabeth’s father, was famously possessed of “the sort of temper which did not make for the happiness of those around him.” Understandably panicked, the governess cast about the village for a reasonable substitute. She found “a pretty boy…of about equal stature [to Elizabeth].” She then “clothed [him] in the dress of the dead child,” which was apparently good enough for Henry, and the so-called Bisley Boy carried on the ruse all the way to the throne.
Stoker’s account is, by his own admission, likely little more than legend, but one aspect of it rings true. Every good plot must answer the primary question, “To what end?” As Henry famously used beheading to communicate his displeasure, the governess’s scheme can be chalked up to her response: “To do everything possible to keep my head.” As to whether the donning of a regal cloak would be enough to fool the whole court, including Dear Old Dad, well, this was the era of portrait-only visual representation, and presumably, Henry hadn’t seen his daughter in a while.
Indeed, literature is lousy with frock swaps facilitating successful royal impersonation. In Mark Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper, Tom Canty, a boy from the wrong side of the hedgerow, encounters his ringer, Edward Tudor at the gates of the Palace of Westminster. Intrigued, and each envious of how the other lives, the two trade outfits, Edward now “garlanded with Tom’s fluttering odds and ends,” and Tom, “tricked out in the gaudy plumage of royalty.” As Twain once quipped, “the clothes make the man.” The ploy is so convincing that Tom very nearly gets crowned king. In fiction, the identity switch proves beneficial to all. Having experienced the suffering of the masses firsthand, Edward vows to become a just monarch, while Tom earns a permanent place at court. (In real life, Edward VI had little time for professional beneficence. He died at 15.)
Perhaps Kate shares young Edward’s yen for a spate of normalcy. For all its opulence, life as a royal seems pretty miserable; you can’t even recover from surgery without half of TikTok speculating about a Brazilian Butt Lift. Who wouldn’t want to see how the other, unexamined half (or 99.9 percent) lives? Maybe Kate had a fortuitous run-in with an anonymous lookalike, loaned the woman her oversized sunglasses and bid her to enjoy being Queen-To-Be For A Day. It’s a forgivable shirking of duties.
Then again, some eagle-eyed investigators have suggested that, rather than a random imposter, the woman in the windshield is in fact Pippa Middleton, standing (or sitting) in for big sis. Loose lips sink ships, so it makes sense to farm such a sensitive task out to family. But, outside of the Olsens, could two siblings really pass off as one another? William Shakespeare certainly thought so. A shipwreck separates Twelfth Night’s heroine Viola from her brother Sebastian. Fearing for her safety and believing her brother dead, Viola disguises herself as a man and joins Duke Orsino’s court. When Sebastian turns up very much alive, the siblings’ uncanny resemblance leads to much confusion. Even Olivia, who has become quite enamored with Viola in drag, takes Sebastian for his sister’s alter ego, Cesario, prompting him to wonder, “What relish is this? How runs the stream?”
Unlike any potential Pippa-plot, the sibling mistaken-identity caper in Twelfth Night is a matter of happenstance. Viola never attempts to pass herself off as her brother. Rather, she entreats the sea captain who rescued her to “present me as a eunuch” to Orsino. Nor was it the first time Shakespeare mined family resemblances for storyline. A Comedy of Errors loses the genderbending, but doubles up on the mayhem with two sets of oft-confused twins, both implausibly separated at birth.
If one’s blood relatives decline to pick up the royal mantle, a trusted ally will do in a pinch. In Henry IV, Sir Walter Blunt, a loyal knight, rides into battle in Henry’s armor and winds up paying the ultimate price at the hands of a Scottish nobleman. Believing he has killed Henry, the Earl of Douglas gets a short-lived moment of triumph, until Hotspur points out, “The King hath many marching in his coats.” Undaunted, Douglas vows to “murder all his wardrobe, piece by piece.” For Kate, might some intrepid Lady of the Bedchamber, eager to prove fealty, agree to a brief drive into metaphorical battle?
If Middleton has indeed been temporarily replaced, these literary doppelgangers (save for poor Blunt) might serve as heartening examples of the body-swap scheme working out. But employing a double can be a risky gambit for all parties involved. In Wilkie Collins’ 1860 sensation novel, The Woman In White, the young Anne Catherick escapes from a mental asylum. She is a troubled soul with a quite specific wardrobe range: “If I mustn’t wear white, I don’t care what I wear,” she explains. Meanwhile, two conniving nobles, Count Fosco and Sir Percival Glyde, conspire to steal the inheritance of Glyde’s naive fiancée Laura Fairlie – Anne’s illegitimate half-sister. The women’s striking resemblance, along with Anne’s unwavering wardrobe hue, make her a prime target for the sort of wicked machinations cooked up by dastardly fiancés in gothic novels. After her escape, the terminally ill Anne contacts Laura to warn her that Glyde has a dark secret. Glyde and Fosco resolve to pull the old sister switcheroo and have Laura sent back to the asylum in Anne’s stead, while passing Anne’s corpse off as Laura. The plot almost works. Anne dies, and Laura finds herself institutionalized with no means of proving her identity. Fortunately, not all men are bastards, and Laura is ultimately rescued by Walter Hartwright, the virtuous young teacher who has fallen in love with her.
Herein lies a cautionary tale for anyone seeking to employ a body double for nefarious ends. While the two lovebirds live happily ever after, the conspirators don’t fare as well. Glyde perishes in a fire and Fosco flees the country. There’s also a lesson for Kate. Global fame aside, when going AWOL, one should always carry ironclad proof of identity, just in case.
Sure, one might argue that Shakespeare and 19th century lit might not be the most practical templates for figureheads looking to get away for a while. But this is the British Monarchy, where pragmatism isn’t necessarily the North Star. The idea that one of the most recognizable royals might, for whatever reason, turn to a look-alike in a moment of desired solitude isn’t any sillier than that of a septuagenarian ascending the throne by donning a full-on Disney-esque fur cape and massive crown. (To wit, a line from Sleeping Beauty on the topic of modernity: “Now Father, you’re living in the past. This is the fourteenth century.”)
“Royal body swap” is exactly the sort of goofy, over-the-top theory that captivates the public imagination (or at least the most unhinged corners of it). Unfortunately for Kate Middleton, it’s likely that no amount of paparazzi-baiting mother-daughter car trips or portraits with the kids will convince the Duchess-dupe truthers. It seems that nature abhors a princess vacuum.