Kate Middleton photo that hid gut-wrenching truth

Kate Middleton looked blissful as she made her way to church last year. What none of us knew, was that the pics hid a painful truth.

The royal family has quite the flare for making waves and trouble and headlines by doing nothing but walking.

Notable outings for my forthcoming coffee table book of important royal walks will be the 2020 Westminster Abbey one for Commonwealth Day, the final turn on the royal stage for Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex: She smiled like a seasoned pro, he looked like a thunder cloud.

There will be the 2021 post-funeral walk that saw Harry make noise shaped air in the vicinity of Prince William after their grandfather’s death and with the Sussexes’ Oprah claims still ringing in the world’s ears.

And how could I miss the 2022 Abbey dash that saw Prince Andrew escort the late Queen into Prince Philip’s memorial service in a pathetic and painfully transparent attempt to rehabilitate his image?

This year, thanks to the hurly-burly, bizarre, loop-de-loops of 2024, I think we also need to add Kate, the Princess of Wales’ 2023 walk to church on Christmas Day to our list.

None of us knew that these photos of Kate Middleton’s last official engagement hid a deeply painful truth. Picture: Stephen Pond/Getty Images)

The Princess of Wales looked blissfully happy as she walked to church with husband William and their three children (along with Mia Tindall, far right). Picture: Samir Hussein/WireImage

What none of us knew at the time, and not even Kate herself, was that the photos of that outing hid a deeply painful truth.

Oh, it was textbook royalling on the actual day. Her bespoke Alexander McQueen look -flawless. The three Wales children - impeccably turned out and giving us Victorian-dolls-come-to-life vibes. William - successfully separated from the Aston Villa almanack he had found in his stocking that morning.

Really, if ever there was ever an engagement that courtiers should cut out and stick on a nice bit of cardboard for instructional purposes for future HRHs, this should be it.

However, that simple walk to church would also turn out to be the princess’ final official engagement to date.

The Kate-in-blue images represent just how fragile and how vulnerable the royal family was. Picture: Stephen Pond/Getty Images

Today, from this distance five months on, those Kate photos take on a whole new layer of meaning, especially when you consider that this coming week will mark 150 days since then.

Now, those Kate-in-blue images stand for something much darker. To me, they represent just how fragile and how vulnerable the royal family was, except we had no idea at the time.

In some ways, the Christmas church outing with the extended royal family is a deceptive visual.

Not consciously, mind you, but the meaning we were meant to draw it - of a family that had weathered years of storms and come out the other side as game as ever to visit a Welsh community centre - has now turned out to be largely illusory.

There was nothing then - nor even discernable now with a gimlet eye- to suggest what would lie ahead for the princess, no hint that barely three weeks later she would be tucked up in a hospital bed in London for planned abdominal surgery. And there was certainly no clue that lurking somewhere were malignant cancer cells, whose presence would later be found by her medical team.

After months of speculation, Kate Middleton revealed in March she had cancer and was undergoing chemotherapy in a stunning announcement. Picture: Kensington Palace/Instagram

The Princess of Wales sparked a string of ugly conspiracies after sharing a photoshopped family photo on Mother’s Day. She later apologised and admitted she had “experimented with editing”. Picture: Kensington Palace/Instagram

Not only, in late December 2023, did the Princess of Wales look as hale and as hearty as ever, but the coming year looked like it would be a big and bright one for the House of Windsor.

The Sussexes seemed to have blown themselves out and were done litigating all the ways that Crown Inc had failed them.

In 2024, there would be no more books or TV shows or podcasts of them making the not-unsuccessful case that the institution was broken and that Harry’s family were so emotionally inhibited and bound up they should get their own entry in the DSM, the psychiatrists’ handbook.

Everything, in December 2023, should have been about to come up Windsor!

This year was meant to be the first proper full one of the King’s reign, when Charles, having really gotten his feet under the throne and worked out how to pose for a nice new stamp, could really get on with showing the UK what he was made of.

The same went for the Prince and Princess of Wales. They had a couple of big, shiny international tours planned, including one to Rome where Kate could really have proven she was still a dab hand at sundress choice.

But oh no. What have we gotten this year? Madness, sadness, hand-wringing, navel-gazing, conspiracy theories so wild they should only be discussed while wearing tinfoil helmets, noxious social media goings on, sniping, and a level of toxicity not seen since someone last tested the ground water near Chernobyl.

The truth that that Kate photo from Christmas 2023 concealed was just how close to the wind Crown Inc was sailing.

Originally published as Kate Middleton photo that hid gut-wrenching truth