I keep thinking back to the garden party, 4 days after wedding, yes it was C's bday but I was surprised that they delayed the honeymoon - at the time, I thought this was a very nice gesture as Kate was still nominally on maternity leave, so, THEN I had such a positive view of their participation in the event
Naive me, H&M must have been asked/told to attend, setting the stage for the whole silly garden party kerfuffle
Not that I am a paragon of protocol and manners, but I think to my own life and wonder what I would do, asked to attend a party I did not want to attend, answer: having decided to go, I would suck it up for 2 hrs, common sense to avoid irritating the family, then go have a cocktail. Heck, we have all attended some function that was distasteful, and we deal with it
This garden party is more complicated than my hypothetical, due to the army of press at garden party - ready to lip read and video tape ...
But, I keep coming back to a leitmotif ... if they had acted with NORMAL attention to social conventions, they would have been fine Being a less controversial member of the BRF is not rocket science, common sense is invaluable