R100 - William has most definitely stringently protected Kate. He was not scheduled to appear with her the day after that foul interview in which Meghan trashed his wife with his brother's compliance, as well as calling the family "racist", William went with his wife to her engagement the next day, with his arm protectively around her waist.
But it is not just about protecting Kate. The Sussexes are trying to damage what they left behind in order to justify their leaving it, rather than admitting that they wanted more money, more prestige than the Cambridges, but without the boring work.
The irony is that the Sussexes also want to hold onto what they left behind because they've found that without its cachet, they'd be nobodies.
They showed their penchant for vicious lying, petty revenge, and selling out anyone including the Queen and Harry's father for personal gain, far too strongly and too early.
The result is that William knows that to let them anywhere near the BRF, especially his own family, is too dangerous to allow.
He's no fool, and he knows a dangerous enemy when he sees one, and he has not only his immediate family to protect, but his father, his grandmother, and his children's patronage.
That one of those enemies is his own brother is something William is willing to accept, and he's also got a ruthless side. If it comes down to Harry, or the Queen and Charles and Kate and the kids and the monarchy, William hasn't hesitated to make clear who he's willing to throw overboard.
It's hard to know whether the Queen and Charles have accepted this reality or not, but clearly strong-minded, clear-sighted William has.
So, William's "protection" instinct probably covered more than Kate, and resulted in significant input on future ties (read: "If you put them on that balcony, I and my wife and children will not be on it; nor will I smilingly attend their child's christening; nor will I ever remain in a room occupied by the woman who started rumours about my marriage, nor let her into any home I live in.")
Hence, no Sussexes at the big, glitzy Diana celebration that we all know Meghan would have killed to attend; no Windsor christening for Lilibet, which Meghan and Harry also, quite incomprehensibly, wanted and thought they could demand; and, likely, no photo ops with the family for the Platinum Jubilee, or the Trooping the Colour.
William has undoubtedly been behind some of this. The Queen is looking exceptionally fragile recently, with deep lines in her collapsing face that weren't there even two weeks after Philip's funeral, when she stepped out into pubic again. I doubt she has the stomach to confront more tensions between the Harkles and her two heirs, and is, at this point, unable to stand up to William's insistence that the Harkles drink to the dregs the cup of exile and ill-will that they mixed for themselves.
And Charles must have been wounded to the heart by that "genetic pain" interview and then Gayle King releasing the tenor of private conversations between him and his son, threatening that unless the "concerns" of the two traitorous vipers were "addressed", more dirt would be exposed.
And then, for the Queen, the Lilibet fiasco.
So William now probably has more of a case to build with his father and the Queen for building a moat around the castle that the Harkles can't cross.
His protectionist judgement is in full swing. Meghan and Harry have no one but themselves to blame. They can count themselves lucky that the Queen is too tired to face another furore by rescinding Harry's ducal title.
