The "Wagatha Christie" trial has finally come to an end after a judge announced Rebekah Vardy had lost her battle to sue Coleen Rooney for defamation.
It has been nearly three years since Coleen's infamous tweet detailing her elaborate sting operation to uncover exactly who was leaking false stories about her to the S*n newspaper. The internet exploded when Coleen hooked in her followers before she dropped the bombshell revelation: "It was..... Rebekah Vardy's account."
Jamie Vardy's wife reacted with outrage at the claim and launched a legal bid to clear her name. The bitter battle spawned a media circus as the two tabloid heavyweights aired their dirty laundry in the most public way imaginable.
READ MORE: Coleen Rooney issues lengthy statement as she wins court case against Rebekah Vardy
As the multi-million pound trial unfolded in May, it became increasingly hard to believe Ms Vardy was the one who brought the case to court. The 40-year-old's attempts to clear her name included staggering revelations such as the assertion her former agent Caroline Watt's phone "fell into the sea" shortly after the court ordered it to be searched.
Mrs Justice Steyn discredited this version of events today and said: "the loss of both the Claimant’s and Ms Watt’s copies of their original WhatsApp conversation was deliberate rather than accidental". Ms Vardy has since released a statement to say she is "disappointed" at the verdict. But it is difficult to see how she could have expected the revelations from the trial to have anything other than a negative impact on her image.
Wayne Rooney's wife claimed she made every effort to avoid the "drawn out" court case, but it was Vardy who continually insisted the dispute needed to be aired publicly. This makes the outcome of the case even more remarkable as the mum-of-five's attempts to save her reputation will surely go down as one of the greatest acts of self-sabotage in celebrity history.
Although Coleen may have won in the eyes of the law, her statement released in the aftermath of her victory highlights the sad reality that there was no real winner in the Wagatha Christie trial. The mum-of-four never wanted the dispute to go to court and addressed how distasteful it was that an expensive legal battle was played out against the backdrop of the cost-of-living crisis. She added: "The money could have been far better spent helping others."
The legacy of the trial will come to define both women but the unsavoury revelations that came to light during Vardy's rigorous cross-examination will have a more damaging effect. It will take some time for her reputation to recover after she had to apologise for a kiss-and-tell story about Peter Andre and it became public knowledge that she leaked stories on her husband's teammates to the press.
But Vardy can hardly complain as the situation is purely self-inflicted. The glossy celebrity trial may have provided some guilty pleasure entertainment for the public, but it has eventually proved to mean nothing more as both parties will now eagerly look to move on from proceedings.
A saga that cost millions of pounds and went all the way to the High Court uncovered something that had already been made known to the public in a tweet posted 2 years, 9 months, 2 weeks, and 4 days ago: "It was..... Rebekah Vardy's account."
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