On Sunday night, the picture agency AP issued a statement: they would be “killing” a photo—an industry term for retracting an image—of Kate Middleton and her three children from their wires. It caught, well, nearly everyone by surprise: the family photograph, released in honour of Mother’s Day, was fairly innocuous. It featured Kate Middleton sitting outside in a chair, while a sweater-clad Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis embraced her. Yet all was not as it appeared. “At closer inspection, it appears that the source has manipulated the image,” the AP said in its advisory note. “No replacement photo will be sent.”
Indeed, the photo had been altered. Princess Charlotte’s left hand did not match up with the sleeve of her sweater. Middleton’s zipper was misaligned, and some body parts—including a knee and a hand—were awkwardly blurred. By Monday morning, Kate herself had issued an apology on social media: “Like many amateur photographers, I do occasionally experiment with editing,” she wrote on X. “I wanted to express my apologies for any confusion the family photograph we shared yesterday caused. I hope everyone celebrating had a very happy Mother’s Day.”
Under normal circumstances, this would have been an awkward—albeit careless—mistake. But the royal family’s current situation is far from normal. Over the past few months, wild conspiracy theories have been circulating on the internet about the whereabouts of the Princess, who hasn’t appeared in public since Christmas Day. Back in January, Kensington Palace released a statement explaining that Kate had undergone a planned abdominal surgery, and said she would remain in the hospital for 14 days and not return to public duties until after Easter.
The statement was a fairly vague one, especially when compared to the missive issued by King Charles’s press office about his cancer diagnosis. It was likely done that way to respect the Princess’s privacy: “The Princess of Wales appreciates the interest this statement will generate,” the statement read. “She hopes that the public will understand her desire to maintain as much normalcy for her children as possible.” Kensington Palace also wrote that they would “only provide updates on Her Royal Highness’s progress when there is significant new information to share”. Despite their request, speculation began to build surrounding the health of the Princess.
In late February—after the Prince of Wales pulled out of a memorial service for his late godfather due to a “personal reason”—conspiracy theories exploded on X. Some were humorous (suggestions that Middleton had sneaked off to the viral Glasgow Willy Wonka experience, for example). Others, however, were not. Many took a more sinister tone, speculating that the Princess was “missing”, and that the royal family was hiding the real reason for her absence from public life.
“It’s worth noting that a lot of the conversation was initially driven by pro-Harry and Meghan accounts, and many of the darker conspiracy theories (the ones described as ‘deeply sinister’ and ‘highly libelous’ by the Daily Mail) seemed to originate from those online spaces,” former Buzzfeed News royal reporter Ellie Hall told the Neiman Lab.
Soon after, paparazzi photos were published by TMZ of the Princess being driven around the Windsor Castle grounds by her mother, Carole. Kensington Palace let it be known that they did not authorise the photos, and as a result, no British media outlets ran them. (“There are pap picture [sic] of the Princess of Wales. We are not running them out of respect for her privacy whilst she recovers from her operation in the timescale we were given for it,” Chris Ship, ITV’s royal editor, said on X. “As far as I know, no other UK broadcaster or newspaper has published the photos either.”) Yet the images only served to make the conversation more heated: some users were convinced that the photos were staged, or even more bizarrely, that Kate had used a body double.
This Mother’s Day photo, however, was the family’s chance to right the narrative: it could show the Princess comfortably at home with her children with a personal caption provided by the family, showing that all was well with the Waleses.
Except that didn’t happen. While it seems Middleton attempted to make minor steps to clean up the image, the fact that she manipulated it at all just raised more questions about why she chose to share it in the first place. Once again, conspiracy theories abounded.
There’s a well-known quote by the late Queen Elizabeth II, once uttered to her biographer, Sally Bedell Smith: “I have to be seen to be believed.” The Queen, it seems, always knew what the Waleses are now learning the hard way.
