It was all starting to die down, the embers still smouldering, but certainly not much longer. The big Mother’s Day photo scandal had been ‘explained’ in a charming tweet signed by ‘C’.
The photo of Catherine and her three children was not a flipped Christmas photo, nor was it a headshot lifted from the cover of Vogue. It had simply been tinkered with by a Princess of Wales who may have too much time on her ringless hands as she recovers from surgery.
But then, on Monday, Kate was spotted in a car with William heading away from Windsor.
The two press photographers outside the gates were surprised, only managing to crack the back of her lovely head as she turned away from them. The line from the palace was that she was getting a lift with her husband – he was on his way to the Commonwealth Day service in London – to a private appointment.
Suddenly, pods were used on those embers, and social media didn’t just catch fire, it exploded in a new nuclear mushroom of speculation.
Kate turned away, didn’t smile and wave to photographers as usual, and took a lift to a private ‘appointment’ as Prince William headed to the Commonwealth Day Service at Westminster Abbey on Monday, says Liz Jones
Some of it was just stupid. The bricks on the wall did not fit through the car window. Why on earth are Kate and William suddenly a one car family? Why wear fake eyelashes and your hair in a chignon to a private ‘appointment’?
Was it even her head? It was definitely taken from her profile during the walk to church on Christmas Day 2023 and ‘they’ just deleted her earring. In fact, her hat brim can be clearly seen. ‘They’ are really bad at this.
Or is the shadowy profile in the car completely different – just look at the jaws!
Scary. But the picture did ring alarm bells. For some, it confirmed that Kate had nothing to do with the photo debacle and that there is something serious is happening.
How had the happy, outgoing, not-a-care-in-the-world woman seen in that Mother’s Day picture turned into this remote mystery. She knows the snipe outside Windsor like she knows her own cleaner – why didn’t she wave and smile for a second as the car drove off?
That’s what scared us the most. It just wasn’t like Kate – the sudden withdrawal of the beaming, stoic goodwill we’re used to.
It was the moment anyone with any sense would blame the palace— again – for not having a unified strategy in place with everyone on board.
But that was the moment that told me that Kate is not cooperating and that she didn’t have a hand in photogate but took the rap for it.
It’s her PR and communications team that would have chosen it and released it with its bland, cheery message, no doubt carelessly done because it was a weekend, and maybe they don’t really do weekend work.
The palace has had decades of knowing whatever they say will be believed. The late queen was entrusted. This has made them arrogant. But today they’re up against an army of millions of keyboard warriors: it’s the wisdom of crowds, made real and dangerous, immediate.
The now infamous photoshopped Mother’s Day photo of the Princess of Wales and her children – the first public image of her released since her operation
What has made me particularly angry are the headlines suggesting that the public has it in for Kate. The Sun surrendered its cover to the order ‘Leave Kate Alone’. On X we started seeing more and more Tweets like: ‘The press killed Diana. Now they’re after Kate!’
But no one bullies the Princess of Wales. We’re all on her side, just puzzled and concerned.
It is Wales’ communications team that has thrown her – and partly William – under the bus.
Did no one think to remind him that on his first outing with Kate since her surgery and Photogate, he should look alert and loving in the car. As for his appearance at the Commonwealth Day Service, he didn’t even acknowledge the dancers and musicians playing merrily outside.
If Wales’ PR team had completed their media studies and IT course at Community College, they would have known that the way to put this to rest was for William to have caused a furor on Monday night when he gave a speech for the Earthshot Prize Launchpad . He could have included a few joking references to the described family snap and we would have gone, ‘Whew, everything’s fine!’
Williams’ seriousness in the moment, the worn-out exasperation, the refusal to acknowledge us minions, to make light of his wife’s editing skills or lovingly and warmly assure us of her health, fuel the wilder speculation on social media.
It could all have been averted, our worries put to rest, by a PR team that knew what they were doing – and Kate would not have been dragged into it at all, but left to continue her recovery. Just come clean with the people who bankroll you. It’s the least we deserve. This is not going away.