Royal Anecdotes and its publisher, Syntagma Media, are three years old today, October 20, 2008.

Not wishing to upstage Prince Charles’s 60th, I’ve written a short, tongue-in-cheek, celebratory piece in Syntagma.

Read it here.

The Queen’s Private Secretary has requested (”commanded” in the old parlance) a visit to Google’s London offices sometime in October.

HM particularly wants to meet the team that created a Royal Channel for her on YouTube, which is now owned by Google.

Staff say the Queen learned to use computers only two years ago to be able to email her grandchildren. She has also mastered the art of texting on her mobile phone and regularly keeps in touch with Prince William, Harry and Zara.

It’s believed Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie taught her how to use YouTube and Facebook and may even have suggested the Royal Channel idea.

Her Majesty is said to surf the internet a lot, and probably likes to see what people are writing or saying about her and her family.

I would think it more than likely that she reads Royal Anecdotes occasionally as we are often in the top four or five results in Google searches for Royal terms.

It would be good to know that HM approves of our combined efforts and, who knows, might even post a comment one day.

Sometimes getting hold of authentic Royal info can be as difficult as tickling for trout in a chalk stream in full spate. Any inside information would be most welcome.

In an article in today’s Mail on Sunday, Katie Nicholl reports that friends of Prince William and Kate Middleton believe that an engagement announcement is planned for “just before or just after Christmas,” and that a wedding could be in May or June.

If an earlier story is true that Kate will not be at Sandringham until Boxing Day (December 26), it will clearly be just after, which seems like perfect timing to catch the world’s headlines.

The article, however, maintains the Mail’s new policy of acknowledging the Kate-hating crowd of spitting and cursing opponents of her match with the world’s most eligible batchelor. A section of the piece reprints some of the vituperative comments from the paper’s website.

A careful reading of the article reveals it’s in two parts. The first reflecting opinions of some Buckingham Palace courtiers, while the second part concentrates on the view from Clarence House.

These two courts have been at loggerheads with each other since the days of Diana, Princess of Wales. It seems the dogs of war have been unleashed again on the subject of the entirely innocent and inexperienced figure of Kate Middleton.

As Royal Anecdotes reported some months ago, there appears to be a growing faction of “courtiers” at the Palace who oppose the wedding of the two young people. They freely quote the Queen as insisting Kate should get a job and that “she’s not proactive enough.”

I believe there may be some noises of disquiet, particularly from Prince Philip, at the lack of a firm decision on this match. One can imagine him stating that Kate really should be doing something else while she waits. The aim, though, may be to prompt William into “marrying the girl, or letting her go” — a statement attributed to Prince Philip two years ago.

The anti-Kate faction in the Palace has picked up on this theme and translated it as the Queen’s wish that Kate “got a job.” This then becomes “work for a charity.” Have they forgotten that Kate was involved with a charity cross-Channel dragon-boat race last year but was asked to pull out for safety reasons by Clarence House? A dig at Prince Charles’s press team, perhaps?

The article ends with extensive quotes from the Clarence House viewpoint which show the truth at the heart of this story:

Despite this reluctance to co-operate with the Press, Kate’s friends say she has access to Press officers and senior aides at Clarence House, where she is free to come and go at her leisure.

“Kate has a hotline to Clarence House and she listens to everything the Royal aides tell her to do,” said a friend. “When they advised her to pull out of the cross-Channel dragon boat race last summer, she did it immediately. Kate is approached about doing lots of things but the Clarence House staff are often against her taking part because they think it’s too high-profile and they want to keep Kate out of the limelight. She’s in a bit of a Catch 22 situation.”

Royal Anecdotes believes that what is happening to Kate Middleton is very close to persecution. The wave of teenage angst she has had to face from many downmarket websites, including the Mail’s (which is moderated), is almost beyond belief since very few of the trolls will ever have met her. To quote the Kate-haters as proof of anything rational is tantamount to giving up on moderate and accurate journalism.

We’ve long stated that only a quick resolution by Prince William will spare his long-time girlfriend this avalanche of mindless criticism.

We are delighted that an announcement looks possible from Sandringham at Christmas.