Prince William had fallout with Rose Hanbury over affair rumors

Rumors have swirled for years that Prince William had an affair with friend Rose Hanbury.

Though author Omid Scobie touches on the alleged scandal in his latest book about the royals, “Endgame,” he believes that nothing happened between the Prince of Wales, 41, and Hanbury, 39.

In a new interview with Entertainment Tonight, Scobie said he understands why gossip has spread that William cheated on his wife, Kate Middleton.

“Unfortunately, if a rumor’s left to kind of do its own thing, it can run 20 laps around the world before you even think about what, how you want to kind of address it,” the writer explained.

“They never addressed it, so those rumors will never go away even though there’s no truth to suggest that they are true,” he added.

William and Middleton, 41, married in April 2011 after eight years of dating.

Hanbury is a British peeress and also a former model. She married David Cholmondeley, 7th Marquess of Cholmondeley, in 2009. The couple have three children together.

The duo have been known to socialize with the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge in the past. Reports of infidelity first surfaced in 2019.

But recently the rumors seemed to have died down, with Hanbury even attending the coronation of William’s father, King Charles, earlier this year.

Scobie went on to note that he was “very careful” in his book about the “allegations against William, Kate’s and their fallout with Rose Hanbury.”

He added: “For legal reasons there are so many things that one can’t go into but I thought it was really important, even if a rumor is a rumor. And I really don’t see proof that there is more to this than just a tittle-tattle, you know.”

Scobie then explained that Kensington Palace feared that the rumors would “impact negatively on William’s reputation” and alleged that the Firm used Prince Harry and Meghan Markle to divert attention away from the gossip.

“[The rumors] trend on Twitter on a regular basis,” Scobie said. “That’s something that’s incredibly damaging, I think, for William.

“It probably looks even worse, actually, that there was a kind of willingness to throw Harry under the bus simply to make these things disappear,” he continued.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex were seemingly “used as currency, to avoid crises and other areas,” Scobie alleged to SheKnows.

In 2022, celebrity gossip account Deuxmoi posted a blind item that many fans concluded was about William.

“This British royal’s extramarital affair is an open secret in London… and is the talk of every party and newsdesk,” the post read at the time.

“The wife doesn’t mind her and in fact prefers her husband getting his sexual needs met elsewhere, as long as things don’t become emotional, which was the case with the last woman.”