The release of an obviously doctored photo by the British royal family has fueled conspiracy theories about the fate of Kate Middleton, the current Princess of Wales, who has been absent from public duties since she was admitted to hospital for “routine abdominal surgery” almost two months earlier.
Speculation began a few weeks into the princess’ recovery and only grew the longer she went without making a public appearance, although a spokesperson said of the rumors, “We were very clear from the outset that the Princess of Wales was out until after Easter and Kensington Palace would only be providing updates when something was significant.”
Rumors included failed plastic surgery, a nervous breakdown requiring in patient care, and even that she was actually dead, either because the surgery went wrong or because she’d been murdered by her husband or another member of the royal family.
Though conspiracy theories about the princess’ whereabouts were rampant on X (formerly known as Twitter), they largely hadn’t made their way outside of it and its communities of royal watchers, Kate Middleton fans, and X users looking for juicy drama. However, this all changed with the release of an obviously, and badly, photoshopped picture of the princess and her three children by Kensington Palace for Mother’s Day.
This isn’t the first photograph allegedly taken of Kate Middleton since her surgery. A few days earlier, a grainy paparazzi picture of the princess, wearing dark glasses and sitting in the passenger seat of a car being driven by her mother, was released to the press. However, this is the first official image, and the fact that it’s so obviously and poorly edited that several major news organizations rejected it for not meeting their photographic standards has caused the speculation on her whereabouts to jump from fringe Twitter discourse to the mainstream.
Some of the obvious flaws in the edited image include the princess’ impossible arm span where her hands rest on the children’s waists, the strangely blurred and translucent patches in her hair, and the way that the edges of Princess Charlotte’s clothes don’t align with her body, overlapping in impossible ways with her own arm, her brother’s hand, and her mother’s torso. The Princes of Wales’ head also appears to be slightly out of proportion to her body, as if they were taken from different images and pasted together, and her wedding and engagement rings are missing—either a sloppy mistake or a deliberate choice that could have further implications.
Ruby Naldrett, Senior Social Media Editor for the Daily Mirror and Daily Star, shared her opinion that the editor of the photograph lifted Kate Middleton’s face from the cover shoot she did with Vogue several years earlier, as those parts of the images line up perfectly. While several naysayers in the replies have claimed this is down to them both being photographs of the same face, it would be nearly if not actually impossible to get two identical photographs that way, as slight deviations in expression, angle, distance between photographer and subject, and the natural effects of aging would create small differences that would show up on analysis.
In response to the speculation and backlash, the Prince and Princess of Wales’ official X account confirmed that the image had been edited, releasing a first-person apology signed “C,” attributing the “amateur” editing to the princess herself. Far from quieting the rumors, this statement only added fuel to the fire, with many asking what is actually going on that would lead the palace to put out such an implausible excuse.
Further complicating the story is the press photograph allegedly taken of the princess and her husband in a car just hours after the apology over the previous photograph was made. The fact that the picture only shows the princess’ ear and the edge of her jaw, hardly identifying features, combined with the palace’s quick turn around on press photographs taken of the princess (going from objecting over the previous pap shot to apparently signing off on this one), has led to even more speculation that the woman in the car isn’t Kate Middleton at all, and that the palace is continuing attempts to cover up what’s really going on.
In addition to the “Princess of Wales is secretly dead” rumors that are still going strong, a new theory has emerged—namely that Kate Middleton has actually left her husband, and the strange ringless photograph combined with what people are referring to as the “soft launch” of her husband’s alleged mistress, Lady Rose Hanbury, in the papers, was an attempt to ease the public into the news of their impending divorce—one that’s gone terribly, embarrassingly wrong.
In reality, we genuinely don’t know what’s going on with the royal family, though given the paparazzi shot earlier in the month, it seems very unlikely that the most extreme conspiracy theories are true. What is clear is that this entire debacle has been a massive PR failure on the royal family’s part.
(featured image: Ming Yeung/Getty Images)
