Kensington Palace’s PR team likely breathed a sigh of relief as it hit “post” on their Mother’s Day image of Kate Middleton and her three children. The public had been demanding a picture of the missing Princess for weeks, and now they’re finally getting what they want.
Conspiracy theories squashed, back to business as usual, right? Well, it hasn’t worked out as planned, and said photo has exploded the Kate Middleton conspiracies into white-hot nuclear fury. Social media users immediately spotted signs that the image wasn’t legit, with those suspicions soon backed up by international press agencies who called foul, issued a “kill notice,” and demanded the picture be withdrawn.
The official response is to pin the blame on Kate’s amateur Photoshop skills:
As has been pointed out, this “apology” technically doesn’t say that Kate herself edited the image and many are understandably doubting the official line. A day later, every pixel of this image has been pored over and some pretty wild theories have emerged, not helped by William and Kate’s bizarre refusal to release the original unedited image. Here are the most intriguing.
Kate’s face is lifted from a 2016 Vogue cover
One of the more convincing reasons behind the secrecy is that Kate’s face has been affected by whatever procedure she’s undergone. As such, this analysis suggested that her face in the Mother’s Day image has been lifted from the Vogue cover shoot from eight years ago.
Now, you may point out that Kate Middleton’s smiling face in 2016 is inevitably going to be very similar to her smiling face in 2024 as, well, they’re the same person. Similarly, in the Vogue images she’s lit from her right, while the Mother’s Day one has diffuse lighting from her front left. However, analyzing the two images in Photoshop’s Difference Blend mode appears to indicate there are pixel-perfect similarities you wouldn’t expect even between two pictures of the same person:
It’s worth noting that Kensington Palace will likely have the raw images from the 2016 shoot before they were touched up by Vogue for the cover, which may explain some minor discrepancies.
The clothes prove this photo was taken in Nov. 2023
Every single piece of clothing Kate wears is exhaustively pored over and chronicled online, which has provided “evidence” that the Mother’s Day photo was taken in November 2023. Now, Kate and her children are apparently wearing different outfits in the Mother’s Day photo from the ones they wore on the trip to The Baby Bank late last year, but the only difference is the colors.
Is it possible that some digital tomfoolery has shifted the colors to be different in an attempt to throw Royal fashion watchers off the trail? Arguing that the clothes are the same (except where they’re not) isn’t something I’d ordinarily put much stock in, though there are some obvious similarities. You may also argue that even Royalty doesn’t wear casual clothes one time before discarding, but all four wearing similar outfits at the same time? It certainly smells a bit fishy.
Should the plant behind them have green leaves?
From fashion to horticulture, it’s possible expert gardeners may yet crack the case. The thinking goes that if this plant can be identified and if we can discover whether it should have green leaves at this time of year, we can prove this image isn’t recent.
The precise location of the image has been identified, but the species of plant remains unknown:
This may be a red (or green) herring. While nobody has conclusively identified which plant it is, it seems that multiple candidates are either evergreen or would have leaves at this time of year.
Whatever the reason behind this bonkers story, the only thing we can say for certain is that the Kensington Palace PR team is stupendously incompetent. Every decision it make seems to make things worse for William and Kate, and it’s alarming that even now we don’t have any firm evidence that Kate Middleton is alive. If she is (and we have to assume she is) why is it so hard for them to prove it?
