A British tabloid newspaper has reported that Kate Middleton is throwing a wobbly over her relationship with Prince William.

The reason, it says, is that Kate fears if she becomes a member of the British Royal Family in future, she would not be able to live up to the expectations of some Royal courtiers.

“She and Wills love each other dearly but Kate has just woken up to what the next few years could have in store. She is suddenly realizing the enormity of what could lie ahead if she walks down the aisle with William. It’s one thing having an on-off relationship with Wills, it’s quite another thing becoming Queen,” says one of Kate’s inner circle.

“They are keeping a discreet distance from each other. By no means are they walking round hand in hand,” continued the source.

Another unnamed friend is quoted as saying, “Kate is concerned that those before her who have married into the Royal Family have come from an aristocratic background and are from old money. She has seen how the Royal Family washed their hands with Diana — and the Princess had a privileged background and came from the right breeding.

“Kate is just from a very normal middle-class family who have done exceptionally well for themselves. They don’t live on a huge estate or have titles before their names.”

This story has all the hallmarks of being planted by journalists. Various known associates are approached and asked if Kate has ever voiced concern over “the enormity” of what might happen to her in the future.

She would be less than human if she hadn’t confided any anxiety to anyone she knew about the role she seems destined for.

The journalist would then package the comments as a story in realtime of Royal second thoughts.

Kate’s had five years now to come to terms with what must have occurred to her on their very first date.

Updated: August 30, 11.45 BST.

In the comments section of this website we can always rely on hard-fought debates whenever Diana, Princess of Wales crops up in the news.

Now, with the approach of the 10th anniversary of her death and the Memorial Service on Friday, together with the Inquest in October, the arguments are flying thick and fast.

What is the truth about Diana? Was she the secular saint portrayed by her supporters, or the “devious moron” proclaimed last week by the feminist writer and academic, Germaine Greer?

Whenever a person polarizes opinion in the way Diana did and still does, we must suspect a multi-faceted personality at work. How else is it possible that one observer can be repelled, like Greer, while another becomes a devotee for life?

Diana was undoubtedly a very sweet person. Testimony is overwhelmingly supportive of the view. You can’t ignore the disbelieving shock around the world that greeted her untimely death in a little-known Paris tunnel late one August night. The reaction vouches for the conclusions of millions who think her the most adorable person of the 20th century.

The response totally baffled people who don’t have the need for a mother figure in their lives. Greer’s response is typical of clever, self-sufficient individuals who are appalled by the outpouring of what they see as second-hand emotions using a deeply troubled woman as focus.

But there was a darker side to Diana’s nature that can’t be denied. She could be utterly unforgiving and vindictive to anyone she thought had crossed her. The treatment of loyal aide Victoria Mendham, who has never cashed in on their friendship, remains unexplainable in terms of her outer persona. [Prince William has now invited Victoria to the Memorial Service.] There are many other well-documented cases of this “mark of Cain” damnation towards her perceived enemies.

Her father, Earl Spencer, is said to have remarked before the wedding, “Wait till Charles finds out how difficult she is when she doesn’t get her way.”

Hell hath no fury like a woman who imagines she’s scorned. Diana seems to have had a strong sense of inferiority about her intellectual abilities, which quickly concluded she was being patronized or dismissed, even when she was not.

When I read the eulogies of her passionately devoted fans, I’m reminded of R.L. Stevenson’s book, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. It’s as if her supporters have read the book while blanking out Mr Hyde completely. You can never underestimate the need for heroes and the lengths people will go to convince themselves they have found the real thing.

On the other hand, taunts of madness levelled at the Princess are overdone. In many senses she was saner than many of us. That eerily accusative mental illness, Borderline Personality Disorder, always seems to me like something that can be found in anyone if you look hard enough.

When the going got tough, as it inevitably did for such a trailblazer, she usually fell back on a near childlike personality, which projected a blank canvas for others to paint their own pictures of how they wished her to be. Like many women, she discovered the “broken wing” strategy worked a charm with men, who fell over themselves to protect her. It also drew out the maternal instinct in women, who remain her most devoted supporters. In her later years she was seen as both madonna and child simultaneously. There was more than a touch of magnetic Harry Potter “magic” about Diana.

You might conclude that it was a brilliant strategy for operating in the dark corridors of power, but I doubt it was a conscious plan at all. Her school report said, “she lacks all intellectual curiosity”, so it was probably more of an instinctive survival mechanism in a world that had already proved untrustworthy by the time she was six years old.

Whatever it was, it certainly had a stunning effect on the people around her, once she had reached high status in the Royal Family. I can’t help wondering how she might have developed had she mastered the Mr Hyde aspect of her psyche.

The fact that she could handle the world’s projections put upon her at all is the most remarkable part of her character and story. That alone, in my view, makes her an historical figure of some note.

But perhaps no human is allowed that kind of influence in this “vale of tears”.

The Duchess of Cornwall has pulled out of attending the memorial service for the 10th anniversary of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, Clarence House said today.

In a dignified statement, Camilla said she feared her presence could divert attention from the purpose of the occasion.

She said, “I’m very touched to have been invited by Prince William and Prince Harry to attend the thanksgiving service for their mother Diana, Princess of Wales. I accepted and wanted to support them, however, on reflection I believe my attendance could divert attention from the purpose of the occasion which is to focus on the life and service of Diana. I’m grateful to my husband, William and Harry for supporting my decision.”

The announcement came after Rosa Monckton, Diana’s best friend, writing in the Mail on Sunday, urged the Duchess not to attend.

In the article, Rosa Monckton writes that Diana would have been “astonished” that Camilla, whom she described as the third person in her marriage was one of the guests of honour at the service.

In a new book, Diana, The Inquiry They Never Published Chris Lafaille, a former Paris Match journalist, is claiming that Diana was “nine to 10 weeks pregnant at the time she died”.

The author says that “The document dated August 31 1997 was sent to the then Minister of the Interior Jean-Pierre Chevenement [and others]. … It has never been claimed or proved to be a fake.”

Several questions are raised by this assertion :

1. Diana stayed with her closest friend Rosa Monckton just days before she holidayed with the Fayeds and her death in Paris. Rosa provided incontrovertible proof that Diana was not pregnant then. I won’t quote her words as they were very personal, but they are on the record.

2. The French Judge Herve Stephan would have seen this document in his four-year investigation, which stated that she was not pregnant. Lord Stevens’s three-year investigation also came to the same conclusion.

3. Who is funding this journalist? Who wrote the document and has the journalist been given access to it. Or is it just more planted hearsay like so many of the so called “facts” of this case?

We know that as soon as Diana’s bodyguard regained consciousness, Ritz people were coaching him in what to say.

This case is now a toxic pond of confusion, designed to leave everything up in the air so no verdict can ever be reached.

Update : A spokeman for Paris Public Hospitals has said that the letter is a forgery which was first circulated just after Diana’s death.

“Examination of this document has established with absolute certainty that it is a fake,” he said. “Many of the medics who treated Diana remain at the hospital, and all deny the claims contained in this forged letter.”