Princess Kate's name no longer appears on an event page for June's Trooping the Colour on the Army's official website.
On Tuesday, royal fans spotted that the event listed the Princess of Wales as expected to inspect soldiers for the annual ceremony in her role as Colonel of the Irish Guards. This was the first sign of Kate potentially returning to royal duties following her recovery from abdominal surgery.
However, just a day later, all mentions of the Princess have been removed from the event page — a change that has royal fans scratching their heads in confusion. Will the Princess not appear at the June event after all? And if not, why not? At time of writing, we don't have answers to those questions.
In Kensington Palace's original statement announcing Kate's hospitalisation and abdominal surgery, they said that she was "unlikely to return to public duties until after Easter."
Marie Claire noted on Tuesday that 8 June was already later than we expected Kate to return to royal duties — and now it looks like that may not happen, either.
Catherine was not seen in public between Christmas Day and Monday of this week, causing many people online to come up with wild conspiracy theories about her whereabouts.
In response, Kensington Palace issued a strongly worded statement to encourage royal fans to quit speculating. A spokesperson said: "We were very clear from the outset that the Princess of Wales was out until after Easter and Kensington Palace would only be providing updates when something was significant."
But on Monday, photos of Kate in the passenger seat of a car with her mother Carole Middleton were obtained by TMZ, marking the first public sighting of the Princess since this past Christmas.
The past few weeks have been a very difficult time for the Royal Family generally. Not only did Kate undergo surgery, but King Charles announced his cancer diagnosis, as did Sarah Ferguson. Royal Lady Gabriella Windsor's husband Thomas Kingston was also tragically found dead last week at the age of 45.
