A decade ago, their first Mother’s Day portrait was greeted with nothing but warmth. Now, as this doctored photo provokes a welter of conspiracy theories, we pose 20 questions Palace should answer to end the frenzied gossip about THAT picture

What a big change can happen in ten years.

Back in 2014, Kate and William released their first Mother’s Day photo.

Printed on the front page of The Mail on Sunday, our report described the image as ‘a tender, natural and intimate portrait…never before has a royal portrait beckoned to an audience with the same promise of effortless informality’.

Taken by an award-winning photographer at a window in their home in Apartment 1A of Kensington Palace, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, as they were then, were practically still newlyweds.

Prince Harry had just launched his Invictus Games, while Meghan Markle was a relative unknown in Britain, working on the other side of the Atlantic filming the legal drama Suits and running her lifestyle blog, The Tig.

If a picture is worth a thousand words – although in both cases it was far more – in 2014 it was mostly platitudes and coziness. But amid the pile of press coverage following last week’s Mother’s Day photo, it would be safe to assume that a few were unprintable shoutouts.

There are still many unanswered questions (Kensington Palace declined to comment for this piece).

Kate’s admission that she doctored the photograph, and her apology for doing so, has sparked a furious debate about transparency and trust – a key pillar of public support for the monarchy.

Some Palace insiders believed that further comment would simply add unwanted oxygen to the story.

But the silence created a vacuum that led to unprecedented online mockery and conspiracy theories.

Such is the level of controversy, as the Daily Mail’s respected royal expert Richard Kay wrote yesterday: ‘If the royal family is not quite at the 11th hour, it is dangerously close.’

Unfortunately, what the public has officially been told is little. It was reported that William took the photo of his family on Friday, March 8.

It was published on the official Instagram of the Prince and Princess of Wales at 9 last Sunday and then sent to news media.

Kensington Palace soon fielded questions from reporters about why the princess was not wearing a wedding ring, but aides declined to comment.

By 20:00 on Sunday, the Associated Press news agency had issued a ‘kill notice’, saying that the image had been manipulated.

It was quickly followed by Getty, AFP and Reuters. At 10.30am on Monday, an unprecedented mea culpa was shared on Kensington Palace’s social media platforms, attributed to the princess. It resonated around the world.

Italian newspaper La Repubblica called the incident ‘Photoshop-gate’, while Japan Today reported ‘Katespiracy’ and El Universal, one of Mexico’s biggest newspapers, said the photo showed a ‘flaw in the royal family’s communication strategy’.

Analysis of metadata, information attached to images and left attached by the palace when the image was issued, showed that it had been saved in Photoshop, an editing tool, once on Friday night and again the following morning.

It soon became clear that many Britons supported the princess – who is said to be ‘shell-shocked’ – and viewed the dispute as a tempest in a teapot.

But as Kate continues to recover from a serious stomach procedure and William returns to business as usual this week with an engagement in Sheffield, following the chaos caused by his family’s Mother’s Day photo, there are fears that nothing will be “normal” for the Royal Family anytime soon.