After releasing a heavily edited photo of Kate Middleton and her children for U.K. Mother’s Day, the Palace’s damage-control campaign presses on. Middleton, who is reportedly recovering from a “planned abdominal surgery,” has been the subject of rampant conspiracy theorizing for weeks, and the scarce photographic evidence showing her on the mend has also been called into question. Obviously, a poorly Photoshopped family portrait only fueled more wild speculation — as did a message purportedly from Middleton claiming responsibility for the bad editing, which appeared on the couple’s official Twitter account after multiple news agencies retracted the image due to its drastic alterations.
And now it seems a flurry of anonymous sources have been dispatched to make sure we understand this is one hundred percent Middleton’s fault. One told the New York Post that she feels “awful” and wanted to admit she had done the doctoring “immediately,” believing that honesty is the “best policy.” Over at the Mirror, a purported friend surmised the princess was probably “upset by the furore” over her “innocent family photograph.”
Meanwhile, Prince William appears to be going about business as usual while his wife allegedly spirals out over all the less-than-stellar feedback on her Photoshopping skills. On Monday, he joined Queen Camilla at a Westminster Abbey service and then zipped over to an event for his environmental program, the Earthshot Prize. There, he talked about the challenge of fighting climate change, telling a crowd of attendees, “It is not an easy task.” Neither is editing a photo of the royal family, apparently.