Mail: Pippa Middleton is a flop, will she never escape her sister’s shadow?

For the past two years, it’s felt like Pippa Middleton has fallen out with her older sister, the Princess of Wales. Pippa was part of Kate’s 2024 comeback, even if royal sources can’t make up their minds about whether Pippa was coauthoring Kate’s cancer announcement or whether Pippa was largely MIA while Kate struggled all alone. I’ve been waiting to see if any British outlet would pick up on the larger story about Pippa and Kate’s falling out. Nothing from the Mail, the Telegraph, the Mirror, the Times. A conspiracy of silence!

In the meantime, Pippa’s posh life is going from one tacky scandal to another. Pippa had to sell her money-pit petting zoo, Pippa’s neighbors despise her and think she’s arrogant, cruel and nouveau-riche, and she was recently ordered to dig up an ugly parking lot on her property. Well, happy birthday to Pippa, because the Mail has published an extremely bitchy article about all of the ways in which she’s failing. This, more than anything else, is evidence that Kate and Pippa are fighting. Kate probably organized this sh-t herself. An excerpt from “As Kate’s sister Pippa Middleton turns 43, she’s had to sell her passion project and her career has fallen flat. So, will she ever escape the shadow of the future Queen?”

There was a moment, 15 years ago, when Pippa Middleton seemed to have the world in the palm of her hand. As her sister Kate walked down the aisle of Westminster Abbey to marry Prince William, it was Pippa who found herself in the eye of a global media storm. Dressed in a shimmering, figure-hugging gown by Sarah Burton for Alexander McQueen, Pippa, 27 at the time, became a star overnight as she sashayed up the steps of the Abbey, carrying her sister’s nine-foot train.

Then came the headlines, the breathless attention: Pippa the cover girl, the girl next door, the wonderkid; what she eats, what she wears- the woman who arrived as her sister’s sidekick, left the royal wedding one of the most talked-about women in the world.

And yet, as she prepares to turn 43 this weekend, life looks a lot quieter for the Princess of Wales’s younger sister. Far from being the guest of honour at the carousel of glitzy events that trailed the royal wedding, she appears to have retreated from public life, building a family with her financier husband, James Matthews, 51, and their three young children, Arthur, seven, Grace, five, and Rose, four.

Indeed, the past year has been a particularly challenging one for the woman who once seemed to have mastered the art of having it all, after she fell out of favour with neighbours and locals in the Berkshire village of Kintbury, where she owns a 32-room Georgian property on a sprawling 150-acre estate.

The Matthews, who paid £15 million for Barton Court in 2022, are embroiled in a planning row after blocking local dog walkers and ramblers from crossing their estate, where the path was once freely accessible to the public. The previous owner, the late restaurateur and designer Sir Terence Conran, had reportedly encouraged villagers to use it. Their actions have sparked a groundswell of ill-feeling after they blocked the path with an electric gate and posted warning signs: ‘No trespassing’ and ‘Private, no public access.’ Now 35 residents, backed by The Ramblers association, have applied to the local council to preserve the right of way and await the decision of a government-appointed inspector.

Earlier this year it also emerged that the couple had been forced to sell their ‘passion project’, Bucklebury Farm, a 72-acre deer and safari petting park, after accumulating six figures’ worth of debt since its purchase in 2021.

Despite her accomplishments and high-powered connections, Pippa’s attempts to build an identity away from the shadow of her royal sibling seem to have so far, fallen flat.

In 2012 she brought out a book on party planning after securing a £400,000 advance from Penguin. But glossy photographs of Pippa decorating biscuits alongside advice such as sourcing a pumpkin for Halloween failed to shift copies and were widely mocked. Then she became a columnist for a slew of high-profile publications, contributing to Vanity Fair and The Spectator. In September 2013, she began writing a fortnightly sports and social column, but by the following May it had been discontinued.

Her high profile and health and wellness credentials then saw her appointed an ambassador for the British Heart Foundation in 2014, where she took part in a 3,000-mile cycling race across America and the Bosphorus cross-continental swimming competition in Istanbul. But since her ravishing appearance at the Red Ball at the Park Lane Hotel in 2015, her connection with the foundation has somewhat, cooled.

For all her cleverness, sources say Pippa has never quite found her voice in public because, as the sister of the future Queen, her actions are closely monitored by the palace…. With her husband’s estimated wealth of around £2 billion, she is no longer the society butterfly about town, but a member of an elite social clique where discretion and public image are paramount.

[From The Daily Mail]

I can’t believe I’m about to defend this tacky woman, but Pippa is in her 40s, with three young children. While she was having babies, she went back to school and got her Masters in early-childhood education. Those two things alone – going back to school and raising her children – probably accounted for a lot of her time in recent years. But sure, she’s also a terrible businesswoman and she wastes her husband’s money on dumb projects. She also alienates all of her neighbors and has been at war with her community for years. All of that is true! But yeah… this article was commissioned by Kensington Palace. Kate is putting Pippa in her place.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid, Cover Images.