We recently passed the one-year anniversary of the Mother’s Day frankenphoto fiasco. To recap, the Princess of Wales went missing for months, then on Mother’s Day weekend in the UK – which was Oscar weekend – Kensington Palace released a “new photo taken by Prince William” of Kate and their three children. Within minutes/hours of the photo’s release, people began analyzing the amateurish Photoshop, with many theorizing that the photo (released officially by KP, remember) was hacked together using several photos. By the time of the Oscar red carpet, Reuters, the AP, AFP and Getty had all issued “kill orders” on the image. We later learned that a few of those agencies had even contacted KP and asked for the original image before issuing the kill order, but KP refused to play ball. Early Monday morning, “Kate” took responsibility for the hacked-together image and “she” apologized for causing confusion.
As many pointed out, this wasn’t just some minor controversy – what was supposed to be a health update about the future queen consort turned out to have been a faked and manipulated image. As I wrote at the time, “There are enormous ‘political consequences,’ and now, with this f–k up, Kensington Palace has zero credibility if and when some bigger sh-t hits the fan.” Instead of acknowledging that, KP and Buckingham Palace put a different plan into action, where it was all “woe is me, people were so mean to Kate while she had cancer!” We were just supposed to forget that William and his advisors all tossed a cancer-stricken Kate under the bus and made her take the fall for the frankenphoto, remember? Anyway, I bring up this sordid history because this week’s People Magazine cover story includes some revisionist history:
Kate Middleton and Prince William were hurt by the fallout around the photo they released for Mother’s Day last year after the Princess of Wales admitted to editing the picture.
“There was a real sense then that they felt bruised by it,” royal author Robert Hardman tells PEOPLE in this week’s exclusive cover story. “It was treated like some great fraud.”
After undergoing planned abdominal surgery on Jan. 16, 2024, Princess Kate, 43, largely retreated from public view, fueling online rumors. When she shared a Mother’s Day photo of herself with her children Prince George, 11, Princess Charlotte, 9, and Prince Louis, 6, taken by William, on March 10, the image quickly became the center of controversy.
Online sleuths spotted irregularities, leading major picture agencies to pull it from circulation. The following day, Kate admitted to editing the picture, but by then, a firestorm of conspiracy theories had taken hold.
For Kate and her family, the experience was overwhelming.
“It was like being on a roller coaster for them… undergoing chemotherapy and trying to protect your children. It was like being in the middle of a tornado and not knowing when it was going to calm down,” says Ailsa Anderson, former press secretary to the late Queen Elizabeth.
Unbeknownst to the public at the time, Princess Kate had been undergoing treatment for cancer. She bravely shared her diagnosis on March 22, 2024, in an emotional video filmed at Windsor.
“It was like being in the middle of a tornado and not knowing when it was going to calm down” – again, this was not something done TO them – they CHOSE to release a hacked-together photo and pass it off as an official portrait and a health update on a missing princess. William also chose to toss his wife under the bus regarding the photo. “It was treated like some great fraud” – it was a huge fraud? Jesus. As many said at the time, imagine the Sussexes released some hacked-together image as an official portrait. The reaction from these people would have been much different. And that comparison doesn’t even completely work – again, William and Kate are the future king and queen, as they’re so fond of saying. They should be held to a different standard of truthfulness and authenticity.
Photos courtesy of Kensington Palace. Cover courtesy of The Sun.
…that’s a self-inflicted bruise.
Karma delightfully delivered.
Life must be sooooo hard for Their Royal Lazinesses.
This kind of deception should come with serious consequences. They are the criminals in this scenario not the victims at all.
They were clumsy and all thumbs with those silly antics and pictures. They got what they deserved. They thought they could get away with their amateur hour games that the BM have allowed them to play, but not international media. They are not beholden and have no secret pact to prop up the lazy, do-nothings.
They chose to release it AND chose to pretend that Willie took the photo. There was nothing they didn’t lie about. But, sure, cry those privileged white people tears, you are all such victims.
THAT PART Re: William gets glossed over a LOT. We were told he took the picture. It was a big deal because Kate takes the photos but turns out even william can hold a camera and press a button.
And then that was a lie, because there was no picture. IT was cobbled together from other pictures. That’s the other part that gets glossed over. this wasn’t about some editing or photoshop. They didn’t decide that Charlotte’s smile wasn’t great so put a different picture of Charlotte there. There was no original picture, period. thats why they couldnt produce one to the photo agencies.
It was treated like a great fraud because it WAS.
That’s something I always wonder about. William was part of the lie from the start by claiming to have taken that photo. But who actually created that franken-mess? A staffer? Kate? Carole? Jason? I just can’t see William deigning to do any work but he sure signed off on someone throwing that mess together.
And we still don’t know who those people are in the farm shop video. My oponion is that the man is William, which should raise some serious questions. Like why is posing with a woman pretending to be Kate??
Smart&Messy, I saw a convincing argument that the man in the farm show video wasn’t William because the hair under the ball cap, in the back of his head, was too thick. But this still raises serious questions, like, why were these imposters sent out to play William and Kate so well that some of the vendors apparently thought they were really talking to them?
This was a bruising of their own making!! They put out the lie. They continued with more lies. To this day we hear anytime Can’t makes an appearance how brave she is after cancer that she is honoring you with her cancer free presence just more lies. They are the lying liars with more lies to tell. Always playing the victim’s.
Oh isn’t that just too bad. Funny how the media goes after the sussexes for complaining when the keens moan about their lot every day
That’s different because the keens get staffers to complain for them. “You made her lock herself in her room and cry” is certain to trigger more remorse than “you made me lock myself in my room and cry”, even if the speaker should have no idea what happened in the locked room.
Bruised? You spread a false image, get critisized and you are bruised?
This was supposed to be the proof of life pic & it was faked.
It was a wild ride though furst squaddies which happens but when the major agencies got involved & the kill notice… wow
And the tabloids call Meghan “inauthentic.”
That kill notice sure cemented the Wales’ authenticity 😏
Ha! That’s true. Nothing says inauthentic like cobbling pieces together and claiming its a family photo in real-time.
Keen is so not brave
I STILL can’t believe they thought they can release that weird photoshop work and get away with it. These are the people who talked sh*t about Meghan’s work ethic. Look at Kate’s hands!! This isn’t some minor detail, her hands are literally copy-pasted from other pics in such a lazy way. They released this to the reputable media organizations. It wasn’t some facebook, instagram photo. How are they still playing victim about not knowing that??
Yeah, whether they lied about who took the photo (bad), and then heavily photoshopped what was supposed to be an official proof of life (also bad), in the end it still comes down to William throwing his sick wife under the bus.
Curious what they’ll do this year, it falls on 3/30.
Yes, it was a great fraud. By definition of the word. To an extent though, I can understand their shock at being called out. Bc they had been manipulating photos for a while without anyone saying anything so they thought they could get away with it. There was the queen’s pic with supposedly all the grandchildren. But to piece together a photo that much while everyone was asking about Kate was beyond foolish and incompetent. It was a lie and yes, fraud. I’m sure it sucked to have happen while Kate was in ill health but that doesn’t make it less of a fraud. It doesn’t mean we should see them as all of the sudden trustworthy.
“Bc they had been manipulating photos for a while without anyone saying anything so they thought they could get away with it.” Bingo.
Exactly – they (the royals generally, not just the Wails) have been releasing manipulated photos for years without any pushback. I’m sure they were shocked by the negative reception and international attention this ridiculous photo received.
The British media at the time reacted in an interesting way, too – they mostly lashed out at news agencies for exposing the fraud, tried and failed to “whatabout” Sussex photos and scrambled to protect the heir at all costs as he attempted to throw his ill wife under the bus. I got the feeling they were embarrassed by the whole thing – it’s one thing to have an invisible contract and post these doctored photos as if they were totally normal, but another thing entirely to have everyone openly mocking you for it.
I also think it’s notable that this little “reminder” of the Frankenphoto is from People, an American tabloid. Somehow I don’t see the Sun or the DM commemorating it, haha. Maybe if the Wails fail to deliver something clickworthy for Mother’s Day this year?
Yeah, it’s funny. Did People just happen to ask about this to a royal expert or did KP want this spoken about? I have no idea. Ailsa Anderson, if she’s the person I’m thinking of, she has long brown hair, attractive and you can tell tries to be kind in what she says. Does it mean she always gets it right? Not necessarily. But she refreshingly lacks snark when talking about the Sussexes or any other royal really. Which makes her one of the former queen’s better aides imo. Any time I’ve seen her in an interview, you can tell she’s being pressed to say something and she rarely takes the bait. I think I’ve heard her say things that I wouldn’t agree with in regards to the Sussexes but its been pretty minimal.
This, 100%. They act like people are being so hard on them. When in fact, they’ve been putting fake photos out for ages and people just let them get away with it because of the invisible contract.
Bruised? this is punching yourself in the face to prove you’re being abused. Pathetic.
There is ONE thing Will and Kate are good at and it’s playing the victim. Like you said, this wasn’t done to them they chose to do this and to not release the original. This is on them and them alone.
They still haven’t taken accountability and responsibility for it. Instead they deflect and muddy – Kate was undergoing chemo! Ummm, what does that have to do with approving and releasing a doctored photo?
The Lazies are so frail and can’t handle self-inflicted criticism. They had one taste of the bad press that Meghan had to endure all her days in the UK and they folded and whinged like the precious taxpayer funded creatures that they are.
Cry more.
They didn’t have to release a photo at all. The only reason there was pressure about some proof of life was because they had been so dodgy all along. If there had been a picture of Kate bravely waving from the car as she left the hospital after surgery, or arriving at the hospital, this would have been a nonissue.
if that car pic from february was authentic and was Kate, then KP should have let the british press run with it.
We can rehash the last year endlessly, but the bottom line is that KP significantly screwed up and the photo was just one more screw up.
The silence about that photo in the British media and the need to produce another photo basically confirms it was really Carole and Kate. They would have denied it if it was them. But there was just silence.
But this was self-inflicted. All they had to do was post an old picture if they didn’t want to post a new one.
So…they can’t take what they dish out. Got it.
Pretty much. Because they are never wrong and are surrounded by yes men.
“Doctored photo?”
“Great idea!”
It was obviously fake from the first glance, Kate looked far too young and healthy for a woman who claimed that she was not fit enough to work. Contrast it to the, “cancer was found,” video a few days later, I have always wondered if she were made to look ill with the clever use of make up.
The video really showed how much Kate’s face was edited in this photo. Kate a few weeks after this photo looked much thinner and more drawn out.
I also think she just didn’t wear the layers of eye makeup she normally does which also added to the tired look.
But is anyone going to comment on why they are using the word bruised here? This seems to be playing with fire when there is a visible scar over her left eye, which in this photo is obviously covered with hair.
i dont think her face was “edited” in this photo – I think her face/hair was completely lifted out of another picture. She looked healthier in this pic than she has in years, I think they used an old picture and cut her face into this one.
I remember at the time people were suggesting her face was lifted from her old Vogue cover. I can’t tell these things but honestly it did look it. And yeah I did wonder about the use of the word bruise.
In the bench video her face is long and “rectangular” whereas in the farm shop video her face is petite and heart shaped. I’m not buying in to the K double conspiracy but I wonder whether her face was elongated and thinned out to elicit sympathy, even out scarring..?
Kate has never had a heart shaped face. Her chin has always been square which is more obvious when she’s very thin. Like in the bench video.
Had Harry and Meghan released a photo that earned a kill notice, we’d never hear the end of it. The British media would still be going on and on, bruising H&M to this day. And you could bet your last dollar that their vicious coverage would be racially charged. Because the British tabs are nothing if they aren’t anti-Black bigots.
Heck, how many articles were written trying to claim that the gorgeous Misan Harriman portrait of H&M under the tree was faked?
Until he actually released the metadata and the proof that the only change was that the original was full color and the published photo was black & white.
Bruised? Poor Wailin’ Failin’ self-owning nepo babies, I can hear them whining from thousands of miles away.
What still really gets me though is that William/KP blamed Kate for this massive fail. Like, what?? Everyone was told by them that she was so ill she couldn’t be seen in public for weeks/months and then he and the courtiers just casually made her take the fall in front of the whole world instead of an unnamed KP underling? I know, I know, none of this is a surprise.
Another piece of evidence that he doesn’t really like his wife or he’d have protected her. Instead she had to issue an apology. 😂
But he protests too much, which means he was the one behind this all.
I just posted the same thing. Why not make a sanctimonious announcement about how some unnamed staffer got carried away with photoshop, and be done with it?
Does Katie even know how to photoshop?
So he blames his wife because he knows he can walk all over her since the days of her being called the mattress. He couldn’t exactly blame the Sussexes since they were no longer there, so Kitty is his new scapegoat. Everything that reflects badly on him is because of Kitty.
Kate was credited with that photo of the queen with her grandchildren and it seems likely that Louis was not there in real time but added in later. So if she was responsible for that photo then yes she would know how to photoshop. That’s assuming she didn’t take the photo and then hand it to a staffer to photoshop. But the public was told it was from her. There’s no way of knowing. But since a lot of her own pr has been about her being a keen photographer then I would assume she knows how to edit photos. Not saying that means she crafted the frankenphoto but more that there’s no way to know who did?
That’s what I come back to as well, @Mrs.Smith. It’s stunning that someone thought it would be a good look to blame Kate in this instance. We have heard so much over the past year about how much William “took care” of his wife when she was ill and is “protective” of her. They could easily have blamed an overzealous staff member or William himself, trying his best to make a nice post about his wife but failing, whoops. It was a real choice to throw Kate under the bus.
I have tried and failed to imagine any other celebrity or public couple in a similar situation doing the same thing. I feel like even dudes that are not my favourites would realize that using their ill wife as a human shield just after Mother’s Day is a bad look. Dax Shepard? Ben Affleck?Even Justin Timberlake? I feel like they are all smarter (or have smarter publicists) than the heir to the throne.
It’s hard to keep on top of all the possibilities for what was, and wasn’t, really going on with Kate last year, how ill she really was, and with what – but, just a thought, maybe, she did do the work on this picture? Bill took the credit for taking the picture (not sure I believe that either), and here she was, embarrassing him in a big way on a global stage. Him going ballistic in that situation and wanting to stick it to her in return would track. It takes skill to do PS really well, but it’s not hard to use at a reasonable enough level for non-professionals (Adobe wants to sell their product, after all). There’s a lot of built in tools that simplify things.
Of course, when it comes to KP, stupidity and poor PR instincts also track, so that’s just as likely an explanation as anything else.
This episode speaks volumes about the future king. First, it raises a legit question about whether William was actually living with his children and sick wife at the time. Second, even though Kate was probably responsible for the mendacious and clumsy photoshopping, why not blame an unnamed and nonexistent palace staffer instead of your sick wife, and be done with it? That would have been such an easy option. Going nuclear on the sick woman (not that she’s a saint) was unnecessary overkill and begs the questions, What else are they hiding, and Why are they so terrified the future king would be caught lying?
Because he is the heir and must be protected at all costs.
Look at Chuck. Did he ever admit he was wrong to have treated Diana badly? Nooo…it was Diana’s fault she made him cheat on her.
Same with Willie. The heir can do no wrong. Anointed by God and all that. But if Willie keeps on blaming others, he’ll turn into Edward VIII and the Crown will skip him to George – which he probably wouldn’t mind at all.
Yeah, I’ve always always always felt that the press blew the whistle on this because somebody somewhere knew that William was far away from his wife and kids and therefore couldn’t have taken the photo in the first place. After that, the entire house of cards fell.
“undergoing chemotherapy and trying to protect your children”
Protect the children from what? No one blamed the kids for any of this. No one said anything about the kids. They’re using the kids to distract from their own screw-ups.
In fact, putting out a fraudulent photo with the kids in said photo made the kids more of a talking point. It was the parent’s actions in releasing that fake photo that caused harm and failed to protect their kids. People were analyzing Charlotte’s skirt. It shouldn’t have happened. But the fact that it did is on the parents for releasing it to the public and claiming it was real.
Watched a syrupy segment on The Today Show with Katie Nicholl talking about how Kate is doing so much more than expected, given the cancer diagnosis and how Kate doesn’t want to reveal her own cancer type so that she can bring awareness of all cancers. What a crock. She didn’t work hard before, and how is bringing “awareness of cancer” in general going to help anyone? Also repeated the line about being more about her work and less about her fashion (eyeroll).
She doesn’t want to reveal her cancer because it’s pretty deadly, and she went out of the country to get the best treatment in the world, so she will likely be okay.
They totally knew what it was when she had her surgery, and I think they found out what stage/how bad it was that day William pulled out of the memorial service.
Blaming Kate and having her apologise and then some days later release the bench video was deliberate. KP could brief away about SM being nasty to someone at the start of chemo treatment and everybody should be ashamed for speculating about Kate in any respect .
What are they going to do for a follow up this Mother’s Day? Another still from the September video of the family playing cards together? Or will Kate be copying the Bisto mum commercial with her serving up Sunday lunch for her family?
We should really do a predictions post! With odds!
My guess is that *someone* has been furiously moodboarding Meghan’s Netflix show and we may see the kids baking with their mom, harvesting honey/ vegetables/fruit, or picking flowers for Kate. That would be a way for the British Media to offer a contrast between these charming, “authentic” child’s bouquets and Meghan’s more professional arrangements on the show.
Plus, you could really just post three (or four, presuming one for Will) little handpicked bouquets in the same way they have previously posted the children’s artwork, with a little caption that they were “handpicked with love”. It also would avoid having to provide a group shot, because you know it would be heavily scrutinized after last year’s fiasco.
So that’s my prediction – no faces, just flowers and a somewhat shady caption.
They should hire you, Jay.
You’re doing their work for them, Jay. Might as well get paid.
Yup, flowers 💐 😂 picking flowers. Dahlias. Meghan’s fave.
Hurt? No, they should be embarrassed,
As well they should have. It wasn’t the truth at all. Bruised? More like shame that they got caught … and then of course immediately accused the Sussexes of doing the same thing.
I still believe every word, and image from these two since that January when she went missing to this day is a lie . The farm shop picture, the car with her mom ,
The car with wank .
The Mother’s Day picture, the bench video, the forest video ,
The remission statement, the cancer free statement. The I am too sick to work but not to sick to watch men’s tennis . The I can’t do international travel for work because you know but I am down for international vacations. I am sure I am missing a lot . The way wank beard is use to distract from the sway sway and weight loss willy . Why he looks like he slept in his clothes the night before. It’s all been one lie after another. The entire foundation of those two are built on lies and it will all come crashing down one day. I don’t believe one word out of either one of their mouths. Kate and William are LIARS
Narrator: it WAS some great fraud.