While many Americans are just tuning in to the current Kate Middleton drama, I have been casually following her for nearly two decades. Initially, I had a lot of sympathy for Prince William’s girlfriend, who had been unfairly saddled with a nasty nickname by the British tabloids. And though I had rarely even heard her speak, my opinion of her remained pretty favorable as she morphed into Catherine, Princess of Wales. I enjoyed watching her 2011 wedding with my mom, she wears pretty dresses that my tax dollars don’t pay for, and she comes off better than some other top royals in Prince Harry’s Spare. While I have plenty of qualms with the royal institution as a whole, Catherine herself always seemed pretty innocuous; I just couldn’t get that worked up over one future sister-in-law allegedly making the other cry over flower-girl tights.
So for months, I have resisted the temptation to dive too deeply into theories about what’s really going on with Catherine’s health. Seeing her pose outside the hospital, made up and in heels, just hours after giving birth was horrifying. When Kensington Palace announced on January 17 that the princess had undergone a “planned abdominal surgery” the previous day and would be recuperating in private for several months, my only thoughts were (1) I hope she’s doing well and (2) it’s good that this time the palace is letting her recover in private.
After King Charles was diagnosed with cancer a short time later, it seemed understandable that the public wanted health updates on both him and his daughter-in-law. But I tried not to engage with the many conspiracy theories and tasteless memes circulating on the internet. Catherine had announced she was taking time off to recover from surgery, then she did just that. On February 27, her husband canceled a public appearance due to a “personal matter,” but Kensington Palace said the princess was still “doing well.” So where’s the story?
Then on March 10, which is Mother’s Day in Britain, the royal press team tried to assure us that Catherine was fine by releasing an obviously edited photo of the princess and her children, George, Charlotte, and Louis — and now I can’t keep myself from going full Pepe Silvia.
What broke me wasn’t the Photoshopping itself. As a veteran royals watcher, I first counted everyone’s fingers when the image popped up on my Instagram feed Sunday morning. The British royal family has been accused of releasing altered images as far back as 2015. Most recently, people spotted missing digits, misplaced legs, and general anatomical weirdness in the family’s 2023 Christmas card:
So in the Mother’s Day photo, I wasn’t surprised to see Louis doing something strange with his fingers, weirdness around the waistband of Charlotte’s skirt, or a jagged edge along the building in the lower left that’s so obvious you can see it without zooming in. Soon, internet sleuths had pointed out so many odd elements in the photo that it’s hard even to catalogue all the possible alterations. Several major photo agencies “killed” the photo over concerns that it had been manipulated.
What did shock me was the palace releasing this apology on Monday morning, supposedly from Catherine herself:
Why is the royal press team — which exists to shape the family’s perfect public persona — letting Catherine personally take the fall for releasing a horribly Photoshopped image? It’s well known that she dabbles in photography; the palace has released dozens of images credited to her. But now we’re supposed to believe she also personally edited a photo taken by her husband, then threw it up on Instagram with no assistance from a professional?
None of it makes sense. Where is Catherine? Why is the palace being so secretive about the royals’ health? What are they covering up?!
In retrospect, I’ve been edging closer to the “Where Is Kate?” conspiracy-theory rabbit hole for days. Kensington Palace is known for carefully controlling Catherine and William’s image and rarely responding to royal gossip. So it struck me as fishy — or at least sloppy — when Catherine’s rep gave a statement to “Page Six” a little over a week ago and TMZ managed to obtain blurry paparazzi shots of a person who looked sort of like Catherine being driven around near Windsor Castle.
Then on Friday, I read an excellent Nieman Lab interview with former BuzzFeed News royal correspondent Ellie Hall in which she confirmed that Kensington Palace’s handling of Catherine’s health issues has been bizarre:
Royal press offices rarely go on the record. As former Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger noted in this great column that I reference all the time in my work, it’s “unusually difficult” to judge the reliability of royal reporting because “it is a world almost devoid of open or named sources.” You almost never see stories with direct attributions to royal spokespersons, which is one of the big reasons why this “Kate Middleton is missing” saga is so interesting. A Palace spokesperson has gone on the record three times — first in response to a Spanish media report that Kate was in a coma, then in response to the widespread social media speculation about her status, and then once again in response to William’s reaction to the social media speculation.
Instead of going on the record, royal press offices will give briefings and in some situations provide information to a core group of royal reporters — with the caveat that these reporters won’t say that the information came from an official spokesperson. Phrases like “this reporter understands” or “this news outlet can confirm” are very common in stories about the royal family. If you follow royal reporters on Twitter, you can always tell when one of these memos is sent, because within minutes of each other, reporters will tweet a similarly worded update or clarification. We saw this happen last week when news of [British financier and husband of royal-family member Lady Gabriella] Thomas Kingston’s death was made public. Later that day, royal reporters started tweeting within minutes of each other that William’s absence from the memorial service was not related to the tragedy. (The fact that Kensington Palace wanted this information to get out has, of course, been deemed highly significant by some conspiracy theorists.)
Hall’s accompanying timeline of how the Kate Middleton conspiracy theory developed online includes plenty of lurid details that have mostly been omitted from mainstream coverage of her health issues. There’s video of a royal convoy purportedly rushing to the hospital on December 28, a member of the extended royal family recently died by suicide, and a Spanish journalist insists Catherine was in a medically induced coma (which the palace contends is “total nonsense”). And in the wake of the the Mother’s Day photo debacle my social media feeds have been flooded with people insisting the image was cobbled together from an old Kate Middleton Vogue cover, and doing deep analysis of the bricks in the background of a new shot of the princess in a car with William.
To be clear, Hall isn’t saying she believes the Kate Truthers. And a week ago, I was rolling my eyes and quickly scrolling past social-media posts suggesting Catherine was anywhere other than lying low at her home in Windsor. But I’m an Anglophile who grew up on Agatha Christie mysteries and the tabloid drama between King Charles and Princess Diana. Even though all this supposed “evidence” is highly circumstantial — and the likeliest explanation is that members of the royal press team are stunningly bad at their jobs — I can’t resist clicking on dubious Kate Middleton speculation any longer.
This piece has been updated.
More royal rumblings
- Trump Provides Unsanctioned King Charles Cancer Update
- King Charles Gets Snubbed and Heckled During Australia Trip
- King Charles’s Birthday Gift to Prince Harry: More Royal Photo Drama
