Everything About Kate Middleton’s Doctored Mother’s Day Photograph

By
Kimi Tan
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Take a good look at this photo and try to identify as many weird things as you can in 30 seconds.

If you couldn’t spot anything weird, don’t be too hard on yourself. This image looks normal until you really scrutinise it or know where to look.

By the way, Mother’s Day (or Mothering Sunday) in the United Kingdom is in March, not May; so if that was the “error” you spotted then sorry to tell you but you’re back to square one.

What’s Wrong With the Image

Image: X (formerly Twitter) (@KensingtonRoyal)

Looks like Princess Charlotte had a little difficulty choosing which shoes to wear, and decided to wear one with a heel and one without.

Maybe she crossed her legs too much when sitting down so now one leg is longer than the other. That’s why she only wears a shoe with a heel on one foot.

Or, maybe, just maybe, the picture was edited.

Image: X (formerly Twitter) (@KensingtonRoyal)

What’s going on with Princess Charlotte’s skirt?

Reader: Don’t tell me even that is edited!

Well, look at it. Does it really look unedited to you?

Image: X (formerly Twitter) (@KensingtonRoyal)

Here’s another one on Princess Charlotte – part of her sweater sleeve (on her left hand) is missing!

Image: X (formerly Twitter) (@KensingtonRoyal)

The ground behind Prince Louis also appears to be edited – why isn’t it a clean line?

In the same vein, the ledge below seems to be edited. If you really concentrate, you’ll notice it’s once again not a clean line.

Image: X (formerly Twitter) (@KensingtonRoyal)

There are several other things that look “wrong” but I’ll leave you to spot them yourself or check out X (formerly Twitter) to see what others have spotted.

Netizens’ Responses

When the image was posted, some started pointing out several weird things about the photo. Seeing this, even more people began to scrutinise it, finding minor flaws in the picture.

Some claimed it was AI-generated and others began conspiracy theories on why this happened.

To contextualise why people are creating conspiracy theories over a simple photoshop, we have to look at Catherine “Kate” Middleton’s recent lack of press coverage.

Until this week, the Princess of Wales had not been photographed since Christmas – almost three months ago. She was reportedly in the hospital for an abdominal surgery.

A couple weeks ago, some noticed that there had been absolutely no press coverage of her, which is strange as the British press is not known for being restrained in their coverage of the princess.

Think of it this way: right now, you’re seeing images of Taylor Swift everywhere, whether you want to or not. If all media suddenly stops posting about her, wouldn’t alarm bells go off?

Then, a blurry picture of her in the car with her mother was published, and people speculated about the image.

After a week or so after that photo was published, Kensington Palace released the fated picture of Princess Kate and her three kids, taken by Prince William.

Because of all the ongoing speculation, people started to scrutinise the photo to see if they could get any clues on what was going on (and form more theories).

There were, however, some individuals who pointed out that such photoshopping is normal, especially when dealing with young children who tend to move around a lot.

The Truth is Revealed

Everything came to an end when Princess Kate posted this statement on Kensington Palace social media.

Just kidding, nothing ended. The conspiracy theories are still going strong and people are claiming this statement is fake, but I won’t get into that.

“Like many amateur photographers, I do occasionally experiment with editing,” Kate Middleton said.

She apologised for the confusion and signed off as “C”, for Catherine.

So, we now know that Kate Middleton decided to dabble a little in photo editing. What we don’t know for sure, however, is when exactly the picture was taken or if it is a composite of several pictures.

Many are speculating that this photo was an attempt to stop conspiracy theories about Kate Middleton’s post-operation recovery. It seems the photo had the opposite effect, though.

The photo has caused more and more people to be invested in the debacle, sending many down a rabbit hole.

“Kill Notification”

Being the first photo of Kate Middleton in a week, many national newspapers and websites used the photo posted by Kensington Palace in their articles.

However, on the same day, five photo agencies retracted the image over concerns that it had been “manipulated”.

That day, the Associated Press (AP) also issued a “kill notification” – an industry term used to make a retraction. AP said: “At closer inspection it appears that the source has manipulated the image. No replacement photo will be sent.”

Should we take Kensington Palace’s word and assume all is good, or is there actually something else going on?

We’ll leave that to the internet detectives and theorists.

Over in TikTok, there’s a drama involving property agents that’s caused by us. Here’s what happened:

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Kimi Tan