I am a republican, so I'm unimpressed by all this royal wedding hoop-la that has suddenly erupted in the pages of national newspapers.
But I read it, as I must, and I came across a very odd contention in Jan Moir's piece in today's Daily Mail.
Musing on Kate Middleton's final days as "a commoner" facing "a new dawn of royal reality; the starchy hierarchy, the endless protocols, the inevitable rules and restraint," Moir wrote:
"So perhaps it is to the Middleton family's great credit that they have raised a daughter prepared to be quite so selfless, to take on such a damaged and difficult husband; a man laden with the baggage of history through no fault of his own."
Damaged? Difficult? How does she know? What evidence does she have for such claims about Prince William? This is facile psychological speculation presented as fact.
There was more. The prince "often seems unfathomable, even tetchy," she wrote.
Well, his tetchiness with the press is surely understandable - and this is just the kind of article to raise his hackles still higher.
"Unfathomable" may be fair enough. But damaged? That, surely, is a very unfair description and, arguably, actionable.
