Royal Rumble! Kate Middleton, Princess Beatrice Wage War Behind Palace Doors, Report Says

Kate Middleton and Princess Beatrice are secretly at war, a major British newspaper reported on Monday, with the Princess — currently sixth in line to become Britain’s next monarch — said to be seething with resentment at the special attention lavished on the “commoner” Kate Middleton, whose official title is now Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge.

According to the report in England’s 114-year-old Express tabloid, 26-year-old Princess Beatrice — the elder daughter of Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson — openly mocks Kate Middleton’s alleged fixation on losing weight, refers to the Duchess as “pushy” and “vacuous” and turns up her nose at Kate’s “commoner” upbringing.

The British media has earlier noted that Kate Middleton has never engaged in the status-revealing practice of bending a knee — that is, curtsying — when she sees Princess Beatrice or Beatrice’s younger sister Princess Eugenie, even though the two princesses outrank her on the British Royal depth chart.

“Technically, when Kate Middleton is accompanied by her husband Prince William, England’s future king, she is elevated to his royal rank. On those occasions, the only members of the royal family before whom she must curtsy are Queen Elizabeth and the Queen’s husband, Prince Philip. But when she is by herself, Kate is outranked by both of the daughters of Prince Andrew.”

“Yet she has never been seen bending her knee to either.”

Assuming all goes according to plan and Prince William eventually ascends to the throne — after the deaths of both his grandmother, the current queen, and his father Prince Charles — Kate Middleton would then assume the title of Queen Consort, though there has been a movement in the British Parliament to take even that privilege away from her, granting only the title of Princess Consort to the wife of the king.

There seems little chance that Princess Beatrice would ever assume the British throne. For that to happen, not only would both Princes Charles and William need to be rendered unable to take over the monarchy, so would the baby Prince George, Prince Henry (aka Prince Harry) and Beatrice’s own father, Prince Andrew.

But if all of those members of the royal family were somehow disqualified, Princess Beatrice would then become Queen Beatrice, the full-fledged monarch.

Yet Kate Middleton gets all the attention, which has caused tensions between the two only to worsen since Kate and William married in 2011. Sarcastically labeling Kate, “The Chosen One,” Beatrice has complained that Kate Middleton “gets the glamor jobs, the clothing allowance, the limos and the bodyguards, while I have to travel economy,” the Express report says.

Princess Beatrice is also steamed that just as she was ready to announce her engagement to longtime boyfriend Dave Clark, Kate Middleton was “hogging the limelight” by announcing her second pregnancy, forcing Beatrice to postpone her engagement announcement, according to the story.

The Express asked an unnamed “friend” of Beatrice if the royal rumble reports were true and the friend said they were not. But while the friend said that Beatrice is “too good-natured” to actually vocalize the sharp-tongued comments about Kate Middleton attributed to her, the source did not deny that the Princess might actually feel that way.