One week after Kate Middleton was released from the hospital following abdominal surgery, Prince William has announced his plans to go back to work. On Wednesday, the prince’s first engagement since January 11 will be an investiture at Windsor Castle, down the street from his home Adelaide Cottage. The London Air Ambulance Charity has announced on its social media accounts that William will also be present at their annual fundraising gala, which is set to take place on Wednesday night in central London.
According to The Telegraph, these are William’s only engagements for the near future because he plans to spend next week with his three children, Prince George, Princess Charlotte, and Prince Louis, during their half-term break from school. When Kensington Palace shared the news of Kate’s January 16 surgery and an anticipated months-long recovery time, People soon reported that William had also cleared his schedule to support his wife, adding that the couple had canceled their planned international travel. Days later, he was spotted driving to visit his wife at the London Clinic, the private hospital in the Marylebone neighborhood where King Charles III was also a patient last month.
Windsor Castle, where British honors are handed out, can only be done by William, the king, or Princess Anne, and they are usually held on Tuesdays or Wednesdays when the castle is closed to the public. In January, Anne hosted three investitures, where recipients listed on last summer’s Birthday Honors List were receiving their awards.
When Kate was released from the London Clinic on January 29, Kensington Palace said that she was “making good progress” in her recovery. A royal insider later told Us Weekly that the princess was already “back working from her bed.”
Though her surgery reportedly came as a surprise to friends of the royal family, Kensington Palace noted in its original statement that the operation was “planned.” Last week, the palace hit back against commentary on a Spanish television channel claiming that Kate was close to death during her extended hospital stay.
“It’s total nonsense,” a palace source told The Times. “No attempt was made by that journalist to fact-check anything that she said with anyone in the household. It’s fundamentally totally made-up, and I’ll use polite English here: it’s absolutely not the case.”