Princess Kate, formerly Kate Middleton, one day to become Catherine, Queen Consort of the United Kingdom, is missing. Sort of.

Kate, Princess of Wales and wife to Prince William, has not been seen in public since Christmas Day, when she was photographed in jaunty royal blue at church with her family. Since then, one of the world’s most photographed women, a figure who has lived her life genteelly in public since she was Prince William’s college girlfriend, has vanished from public view.

On January 17, Kensington Palace announced that Kate had entered the hospital the day before for planned abdominal surgery. “The Princess of Wales appreciates the interest this statement will generate,” the announcement read. “She hopes that the public will understand her desire to maintain as much normality for her children as possible; and her wish that her personal medical information remains private.” It added that she was “unlikely” to resume her public duties until Easter, which falls this year on March 31.

So far, Kate has stuck to the previously announced schedule. Kensington Palace announced on January 29 that she had returned home, on track with her planned 10 to 14 days of hospital recovery. Currently, it is not yet Easter, and she is not yet out in public. Yet the long pause in Kate’s public appearances and the lack of concrete information about her health has created a fertile breeding ground for conspiracy theories. When Prince William canceled a planned appearance of his own on February 27, citing a “personal matter,” rumors began to fly.

Something, some people theorized, had gone terribly wrong with Kate’s health. Perhaps she was in real danger of dying. Perhaps she was in an induced coma. Perhaps her marriage to William was on the rocks, and she was in hiding. Perhaps she’d been killed and would be replaced by a body double. As the story took off, the joke theories began to take up more space: Kate was waiting for bad bangs to grow out, or to recover from plastic surgery; she’d become the villain in the viral Willy Wonka experience. The Palace, meanwhile, has responded to the flagrant rumor-mongering by telling People magazine that Kate “continues to be doing well.”

Most of the conspiracy theories are silly, but they’re all reacting to a real issue. Kate has long been a reliable pillar of the British family, showing up and smiling at every public event at which she was asked to appear, reacting to........

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