Amid Kate Middleton's ongoing recovery from abdominal surgery in January and her Photoshop controversy that sparked plenty of speculation, there's now another headline dominating discussion involving Prince William and one of Kate's former close friends, Rose Hanbury.
Hanbury's name and rumors of an alleged affair with William got thrust back into the limelight after Stephen Colbert dedicated close to three minutes to the rumors during his monologue on Tuesday's program of The Late Show. In a tongue-in-cheek approach, Colbert said he had some troubling news about England's royal family.
"As we were talking about this show yesterday, the kingdom has been all fluttered by the seeming disappearance of Kate Middleton. Well now, internet sleuths are guessing that Kate's absence may be related to her husband's and the future king of England William having an affair," Colbert deadpanned.
He later added, "So, I think we all know who the alleged other woman is -- say it with me -- The Marchioness of Cholmondeley ... now, there have been rumors of an affair between William and [Hanbury] since 2019. According to tabloids back then when Kate supposed confronted him about he laughed it off, saying there was nothing to it. 'Haha,' always a good response when your wife accuses you of cheating."
Colbert then shared Hanbury's married to one of William's close friends, David Rocksavage. After poking fun of David's last name -- "Really? Rocksavage? That sounds less like a British noble and more like a musician from The Flintstones" -- Colbert teased the show's guest before taking a sip of tea.
But due to that bit, Colbert and Hanbury started trending on X (formerly Twitter), leaving many to ask even more about Hanbury and her connection to the royals.
Who Is Rose Hanbury?
Rose is 39 years old and a former model. She's officially Sarah Rose Cholmondeley, Marchioness of Cholmondeley. She and her husband David, 7th Marquess of Cholmondeley, share three children -- 15-year-old twins Alexander Hugh George Cholmondeley, Earl of Rocksavage; Lord Oliver Timothy George Cholmondeley; and their 8-year-old daughter, Lady Iris Marina Aline Cholmondeley.
Rose once held the position of researcher for Michael Andrew Gove, a Member of Parliament and current Secretary of State for Leveling Up, Housing and Communities. According to The Independent, Rose now manages her husband's estate.
The couple met in Italy in 2003 and were engaged six years later. They tied the knot at a private ceremony at Chelsea Town Hall in London in 2009.
A Long Royal Connection
It's been said that Rose's family has a long history with the British royal family. According to reports, her grandmother, Lady Elizabeth Lambart, served as one of Queen Elizabeth's II's bridesmaids when she married Phillip Mountbatten, the Duke of Edinburgh, in 1947.
Fast forward to more present day, Rose's son, Lord Oliver, served as one of four Pages of Honour for King Charles's coronation ceremony. The Pages formed part of the procession through the Nave of Westminster Abbey. The King’s Pages of Honour also included His Royal Highness Prince George of Wales, Master Nicholas Barclay and Master Ralph Tollemache.
They're Former Neighbors
William and Kate were once neighbors with Rose and David. Rose rarely gives interviews, but in a 2023 interview with English Home she was asked to describe her home.
"It's a Palladian house built in the 1720s for Britain’s first prime minister, Sir Robert Walpole, who employed the very best architects, decorators and designers of the day," she said. "Colen Campbell was the architect and William Kent designed the interiors. The house today is very much as it was then, which is a testament to the incredible care that the house has received from its former occupants and David’s family."
Rose said she needed to adjust to the gigantic home when she first moved in in 2009.
"Moving anywhere feels awkward at first, and it took me a while to adjust and feel at home," she said. "We use the ground floor, and the second and third floors, where the bedrooms are. The first floor is mainly occupied by the State Rooms. I don’t know how many rooms we have in total."
Rumors of the Affair
Allegations of an affair between the future King of England and Rose first surfaced in April 2019, after a U.K. tabloid first sparked the rumor following an alleged fallout between Rose and Kate. It was around that time during an outing when Kate was also seen seemingly giving William's PDA the cold shoulder, which only added fuel to the fire.
Not helping matters, Rose attended King Charles' coronation earlier last May, though there were no photos of her with Kate, who married William in an extravagant wedding in April 2011.
The royals never addressed the rumor, and royal expert Omid Scobie briefly mentioned the allegation in his book, Endgame: Inside the Royal Family and the Monarchy's Fight for Survival, but he told ET in November he wasn't buying the rumor either.
"Unfortunately, if a rumor's left to kind of do its own thing it can run 20 laps around the world before you even think about what, how you want to kind of address it," the royal expert and author told ET. "They never addressed it, so those rumors will never go away even though there's no truth to suggest that they are true."
The mere mention of the rumor became a sensitive subject for the royal expert.
"I was very careful in the book to really focus on this, as the allegations against William, Kate's and their fallout with Rose Hanbury," he said. "For legal reasons there are so many things that one can't go into but I thought it was really important, even if a rumor is a rumor. And I really don't see proof that there is more to this than just a tittle-tattle, you know."
What the Palace Says
It's Scobie's estimation that the palace indirectly addressed the Rose-William affair rumor -- by offering Prince Harry and Meghan Markle as sacrificial lambs amid their fallout with the palace.
"I thought it was really interesting to analyze how the palace dealt with that," the author says in reference to U.K. journalists digging around for any shred of evidence that might suggest the extramarital affair was true. "The worst case scenarios that they feared would happen, you know, just those rumors themselves were going to have enough impact, negatively, on William's reputation. We still see them [the rumors] trend on Twitter on a regular basis ... that's something that's incredibly damaging, I think, for William. It probably looks even worse, actually, that there was a kind of willingness to throw Harry under the bus simply to make these things disappear."
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