It’s the picture that said a thousand words, spawned a universe of hysterical memes and has left the internet trembling with the fact that, yes, even the royal family isn’t immune to the odd virtual touch-up on their photographs.
As the dust begins to settle on ‘Kate-gate’, ‘sleeve-gate’ or ‘photo-gate’, rumours have emerged from behind the gates of Kensington Palace that Kate Middleton is ‘saddened’ by the photo furore that’s engulfed the royal family. For the uninitiated, to honour Mother’s Day on Sunday, Kate released a photograph with her three children, Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis, which was taken by Prince William but, it was later revealed, had been edited. Some metadata experts have since estimated that the image was put through Photoshop at least three times before being released.
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The public debate surrounding the photograph and its discrepancies gained such momentum that Kate had to publicly take the blame, and on Monday issued a personal apology for the ‘confusion’. She wrote on social media: ‘Like many amateur photographers, I do occasionally experiment with editing. I wanted to express my apologies for any confusion the family photograph we shared yesterday caused.’ The photograph was then issued with a 'kill notice' from Associated Press, as it advised its clients not to use it, noting that it had been 'manipulated'.
Headlines in the UK have begged that we forgive Kate’s ‘error’ and move on. Don’t we have anything better to talk about? Twitter users are desperate to know. Perhaps we do have better things to talk about.
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, formerly known as the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, who were essentially exiled from the UK because of the vitriolic racist and misogynistic hate levied against Markle, have long established their own thoroughly modern re-branding of what it is to be a royal in today’s world.
The couple, who signed seven-figure deals with Netflix and Spotify after they stepped down as senior royals in 2020, have set a blueprint that perhaps Kate could have referenced before taking matters - and certainly photo-editing - into her own hands.
Firstly, Harry and Meghan have been proven to be immune to public apologies. They have correctly elicited apologies from news organisations for writing articles about Meghan that were ruled to be ‘sexist’, they have reportedly demanded apologies from King Charles for his treatment of them, but they do not issue apologies. What they have done instead is seized control of the public’s narrative of them and their story and attempted to mould it into something that resembles their truth. But for a royal, in this case Kate, to somewhat ‘personally’ apologise opens them up for a very public dissecting of their true intent. If the royal family is funded by the tax payer, then the public believes it to be deserving of transparency and honesty from them. There is a reason the late Queen lived according to the maxim ‘never complain, never explain.’ To explain is to admit fault, something that precedent dictates the royal family is immune from having to do.
Secondly, Harry and Meghan don’t tell the press what they don’t want the press to know. Whether they do or don’t appear at events, they have made it clear that, in breaking free of the royal protocol in which they were wrestled into, they are establishing their own lives with their own goals and incentives. Within Kate’s issuing of an oxymoronic vaguely transparent explanation in January of her ‘planned abdominal surgery’, there was just enough meat on the bone for the public to get their teeth into, without having any real substance on which to disprove any of the gossip now gaining momentum. The result, if the fallout of 'Kate-gate' is anything to go by, is pandemonium. Either tell all or say nothing, there is clearly no sweet spot in-between the two.
Kate and William have played the 'game' and followed the rules, until now. And if 'Kate-gate' is proof of anything at all, it’s how forcibly tied their hands really are. There’s very little extrapolating that can be done when the future of a centuries-long institution rests on your shoulders. It’s been said that, since Queen Elizabeth II died in 2022, the royal family has been fumbling in the dark and that different royal households have been failing to communicate effectively. Perhaps they could all do with taking leaves out of the books of Harry and Meghan, after all.
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Naomi May is a freelance writer and editor with an emphasis on popular culture, lifestyle and politics. After graduating with a First Class Honours from City University's prestigious Journalism course, Naomi joined the Evening Standard as its Fashion and Beauty Writer, working across both the newspaper and website. She is now the Acting News Editor at ELLE UK and has written features for the likes of The Guardian, Vogue, Vice and Refinery29, among many others.
