Kate Middleton hosted a Windsor Castle tea party that some royal coverage described as “secret.” Kensington Palace later released professionally filmed footage of the gathering celebrating “resilience, determination and hope.” They released a professionally filmed video of Kate warmly greeting guests, including eleven-year-old Ted Haslam, the wheelchair user she met on Ben Nevis. There was tea, cake, and a group photo in the elegant palace rooms.
It also looked remarkably like an infomercial.
It was a pleasure to welcome other Three Peaks Challenge participants and their families to Windsor Castle. Behind every summit was a personal story of resilience, determination and hope. Listening to their experiences of the challenge and their reasons for taking it on was a… pic.twitter.com/fzKZIJx6od
— The Prince and Princess of Wales (@KensingtonRoyal) September 25, 2026
The clip pans slowly across a Chelsea Porcelain tea service being used at the event. The teacup, saucer and milk jug match pieces sold through the Royal Collection Trust Shop, where both are listed at £60. According to the Trust’s latest annual report, income fell by £4.6 million to £85.3 million for the 2025–26 financial year. Net income dropped from £13.9 million to £3.5 million, retail sales fell by £300,000, and visitor numbers declined by 182,000. The Trust cited “general economic and specific sector conditions” and a “challenging” outlook for visitor numbers and retail income.
Against that financial backdrop, the sight of the Princess of Wales appearing in a polished Windsor video surrounded by Royal Collection-style tableware certainly makes for useful branding, whether anyone intended it that way or not.
The families who attended risk looking less like the focus of the event and more like supporting players in a piece of royal lifestyle content. Ted Haslam and his father Pete raised money for Molly Olly’s Wishes, a charity supporting children with serious illnesses. Shaun McCormick raised money for a friend’s nephew diagnosed with cancer. Albie-Junior Thomas, born without a fibula, completed the challenge in 22 hours and 30 minutes for his local football club. Trish Patterson broke a record and raised money for Mind Over Mountains.
None of those causes are mentioned in the Instagram or X post. Not one. The caption focuses entirely on Kate’s feelings about recovery and community. The families’ charities, the reasons they climbed, the money they raised, all omitted. Their stories were the backdrop. The tea set was the star.
It certainly functions like cross-promotion. Meghan Sussex has mixed retail and charity before, most notably through the Smart Works capsule collection, but that partnership openly identified the products, brands and charitable benefit. Here, Royal Collection Trust products receive prominent screen time while the participants’ individual causes go unnamed.
The event was also, apparently, “secret.” The Independent reported on the “secret tea party.” A supposedly secret party came with a full camera crew, a polished video package and an official Kensington Palace social media rollout. Within hours, royal correspondents were covering an event that was apparently too “secret” for anyone not holding a camera. The word “secret” apparently no longer means what some royal coverage thinks it means.
Increasingly, Kate’s hospital visits, hikes, meetings and private-style gatherings arrive with polished video packages. Royal work is now also royal content, and the distinction between duty and branding is becoming harder to ignore.
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Kate’s Three Peaks Challenge raised an undisclosed amount for the Royal Marsden Cancer Charity and brought attention to holistic cancer care, which makes the decision not to highlight the other participants’ causes in this follow-up video even stranger.
Whether Kensington Palace intended the commercial overlap or not, the result is an odd set of priorities: the £60 Royal Collection china is easy to identify, while the charities these guests climbed mountains for are absent from the official post.
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Akin to “Let them eat cake”, attendees suffered the indignity of being a prop in someone’s PR campaign.
The cameras will record and by default show how misguided, out of touch, arrogant and callous, was the idea behind a gathering for this tea and cake commercial.
Spotlighting privilege, living in luxury at the same time as being a beneficiary of funds from hard working taxpayers, shows trivial disregard for charitable causes and a lack of understanding of the needs of people suffering the effects of the cost of living crisis, financial hardship, deprivation and poverty.
A monarchy that has to market itself has lost its purpose. I do not want the head of state of my country, or his successor, to have to rely on sales pitches and glossy brochures to bolster his reputation and justify his existence.
Moreover, this PR tactic is childish. ‘I’ll do everything the Sussexes do, then you’ll get annoyed and start talking about us.’ That is utterly unworthy of a head of state and his successors.
Either the monarchy is a convincing form of government for an entire country, or it simply isn’t anymore. To engage in such promotional tactics is repugnant.
And the Sussexes always put the people whose causes they champion first. The others – the palace residents – only put themselves and their status first.