How Kate Middleton’s family photo fueled rumors instead of satisfying public curiosity

It was supposed to be the image that would reassure the public and calm the rumors circulating online about the Princess of Wales’ well-being. But it was not like that.

Instead, every detail of the photo that Catherine (Kate Middleton) and Prince William released on Sunday, Mother’s Day in England, is being analyzed.

Are parts of Princess Charlotte’s coat wrist and sleeve missing? Are Prince Louis’ hands right? Should that tree in the background have leaves like that in mid-March?

And the photo, published to put an end to questions about why Catherine has not been in the public eye, failed to do so.

The language used by news agencies, which removed the image from their distribution channels, added to the drama.

Reuters issued a “delete notice” telling its clients not to publish the photo. The Associated Press (AP) sent a “photo deletion” email accusing the source of “manipulating” the image.

The BBC first published the photo at 12pm on Sunday, Brasília time.

To publish the new photo as quickly as possible, we took the image used by Kensington Palace on their social media accounts.

The image was also distributed to all UK press through PA Media. This is the usual practice when we at the BBC do not film the event or take the photo ourselves.

But given that this is the Royal Family and a photo that would be seen by hundreds of millions around the world, why wasn’t there a professional photographer behind the camera?

Private royal events are often covered by a guest photographer, either a respected portrait photographer or a member of the national press who must then distribute the photo to the entire press via what is called the “royal route”.

However, as the Princess of Wales recovers from surgery, the group of people around her has been limited to close friends and family.

Which meant not using an official photographer.

Instead, Prince William took a photo of his wife and three children – Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis.

But this is also the couple’s regular modus operandi. Catherine, who enjoys photography, took photos of her children to mark their birthdays, including Princess Charlotte’s last May, Prince George’s in July 2022 and Prince Louis on a beach in Norfolk in April 2022.

Last year, for Prince George’s 10th birthday in July and Prince Louis’ birthday in April, we went back to the old tradition, and the photos were taken by portrait photographer Millie Pilkington.

But before Prince William’s family photo was published, it reportedly passed through Kensington Palace’s social media team, which manages the Prince and Princess of Wales’ online accounts.

And there may very well have been some editing to the original photo, which resulted in the inconsistencies in its appearance.

The issue here is not that the photo is fake or that the Princess of Wales looks worse than she appears in the image. This seems unlikely and would be a high-risk strategy by the Kensington Palace team.

By releasing the photo, they are trying to reduce speculation and gossip, not increase it.

At this point, the most likely explanation is that some excessive editing of the image to prepare it for publication actually cast doubt on its authenticity.

The photo, designed to cool talk about the Princess of Wales’s recovery, instead ended up fueling all the rumors again.

This text was originally published here.