There was a time when pictures shared by the palace with the media came with the badge of authenticity. Now, after the fake Mother’s Day photo? Every picture that Kate Middleton has touched is getting intense scrutiny, which has trained the spotlight on an image of the late Queen Elizabeth II.
It is already proving impossible to digest Kate’s defense that she is an amateur photographer who did a shoddy job of editing the picture of her and her three children. Why? The extent to which the picture was photoshopped makes it difficult to see it as a simple attempt at sprucing it up.
But evidently, this is not the first time when she has manipulated an image — maybe the first time she was called out for doing it. Her latest photoshopping controversy has brought to light a past image taken by Kate and shared with the media to mark the 97th birthday of the late Queen last year, which shows clear signs of being badly edited.
As pointed out by The Guardian, in the photograph “Prince Louis, on the far right, has been moved back. His shirt stripes are repeated under the front of the arm of the settee, the cabling on the carpet disappears oddly, and his highly lit head has a sharp, cut-out edge. On the left, the curls of the hair of Mia Tindall are repeated exactly on the upholstery, draping as she leans around the head of her baby brother, Lucas.”
Though old, the image and the highlight that it was another addition to Kate’s list of manipulated photos has kickstarted another circle of sleuths figuring out everything else that’s out of place in the photo.
At the time, this image didn’t get plagued with a “kill notice.” So why is Kate’s new photo getting the axe? Well, it was posted at a time when the whereabouts of the Princess of Wales had grown into a concerning mystery, her health has become a puzzle that has sprouted theories ranging from her having Crohn’s to worries about whether she is alive or not, and the palace stoically refusing to share any details about her recovery as well as to share the unedited version of the Mother’s Day photo despite knowing that it was only fueling the negative press and wild rumors.
The Royal Family is expected to make a major announcement soon, but will it be about Kate and why she has been MIA for a period that is longer than it is strictly necessary for a surgery that was not serious? If it is, the palace should do a better job of portraying everything is fine this time.
