‘Would never’: Meghan Markle camp’s savage Kate Middleton claim

Sources within Meghan Markle’s camp have spoken out about the royal family’s Photoshop scandal, issuing a sick burn to Kate Middleton.

Sources close to Meghan Markle and Prince Harry waded into Kate Middleton’s bizarre photo-editing crisis, saying: “This isn’t a mistake Meghan would ever make.”

The exiled British royals would “have been annihilated” if they had handed out secretly Photoshopped images of themselves and their family, sources told Page Six.

The claim comes after Princess Kate released a photo of herself and her three children for British Mother’s Day, more than two months after she vanished from public view to deal with a mystery health condition — only for the photo to turn out to have been edited.

The world’s leading photographic news agencies, including Reuters and the Associated Press, warned against the use of the snap, telling customers, including newspapers and television outlets around the world to “kill” the photo.

Its metadata showed it had been edited hastily on Friday and Saturday before its release. There was even speculation she had re-used a 2016 Vogue cover to create a Frankenstein image.

On Monday, Kate issued an apology for any “confusion” sparked by the image, saying: “I do occasionally experiment with editing.”

The Mother’s Day photo, left, and some of the inconsistencies that proved the picture had been manipulated. Picture: Supplied

Meghan and Harry, left, have a difficult relationship with William and Kate, right. Picture: Max Mumby/Indigo/Getty Images

But sources close to her brother-in-law Prince Harry and his wife told Page Six, “If Harry and Meghan had ever encountered the same issue they would have been annihilated.

“The same rules do not apply to both couples.

“This isn’t a mistake that Meghan would ever make … she has a keen eye and freakish attention to detail.”

Among the mistakes were Princess Charlotte, 8, having had part of her wrist apparently removed, Princess Kate’s own hand missing a wedding ring, and Princes Louis, 5, having strangely crossed fingers.

Royal sources told Page Six that this was “an amateur, family photograph taken by the Prince of Wales”.

They said the couple wanted to offer an “informal” picture of the family together for Mother’s Day, which is marked earlier in the UK than the US, and the princess made “minor adjustments”.

Kate posted this apology on the Prince and Princess of Wales' Instagram account. Picture: Instagram

A Kensington Palace source added: “The Wales family spent Mother’s Day together and had a wonderful day.”

Despite calls for the original to be published, Kensington Palace said it would not be reissuing the unedited photograph of Kate and her children.

The bizarre photo-bomb threw fuel on the intense speculation, much of it online, around Kate’s long-running disappearance from public life.

Kate, 42, has been out of the public eye since having major abdominal surgery in January, with Kensington Palace warning that she would not be back to work until at least until Easter.

Speculation about the lack of information about the surgery and its cause intensified last month when William, 41, sparked fears that something was drastically wrong by pulling out of a memorial for his godfather, King Constantine of Greece, just 45 minutes before the event citing “personal reasons”.

This prompted social media to go into hyperdrive about the “missing” princess, forcing the palace to say that she was recovering well.

Days later, photos showed Kate being driven near her home in Windsor by her mother, Carole Middleton.

But on Monday Kate surfaced in public view with her husband for the first time since Christmas, being photographed in the back of a car with William and the images used on British media.

William was going to London for a key royal event, the Commonwealth Service at Westminster Abbey — where he was seen laughing with his stepmother, Queen Camilla — while Kate had a “private appointment,” Page Six was told.

Christmas 2023 was the last time Kate was seen in public on official royal duty. Picture: Adrian DENNIS / AFP

Originally Kate was said to be planning to return to royal duties at Easter but with that date rapidly approaching, no comeback has been scheduled and Britain’s defence ministry had to backtrack when it announced she would be at a high-profile event in June.

The intervention of sources close to Kate’s bitterly estranged brother-in-law and his wife is unlikely to be felt positively at Kensington Palace.

One royal source told Page Six that Markle is “control freak” about imagery, adding, “She always wants the final say, especially when it came to her editing of Vogue.”

Markle “guest-edited” the British edition of Vogue in 2019 but was said to have left staff exasperated, while her theme of 15 women she was inspired by stirred controversy when it did not include Queen Elizabeth.

Meghan Markle is said to be delighted by the mistake, while Kate is expected to be unimpressed with the couple’s camp weighing in. Picture: Supplied

Markle, 42, also reportedly never wanted to follow palace procedure of releasing images via photo agencies such as the Associated Press and Reuters, and only ever wanted to post them on the Instagram @sussexroyal which she controlled, retaining the copyright to them.

Reps for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex and Kensington Palace were unavailable.

This story was originally published on Page Six and is reproduced here with permission.

Originally published as ‘Would never’: Meghan Markle camp’s savage Kate Middleton claim