Catherine, Princess of Wales, apologises for edited royal family photo

Twelve hours after the biggest photo agencies in the world issued a rare “kill notice” to recall the supplied Royal picture,the Princess of Wales issued a statement.

The Princess of Wales was moved to issue a rare apology after sharing a faked photograph on the weekend which fuelled ongoing conspiracies about her recuperation from surgery and raised issues of trust between the monarchy and the nation.

Twelve hours after the biggest photo agencies in the world issued a rare “kill notice” to recall the supplied Royal picture because of concerns over its authenticity, Catherine issued a statement indicating the picture was a mistake.

She said: “Like many amateur photographers, I do occasionally experiment with editing. I wanted to express my apologies for any confusion the family photograph we shared yesterday caused. I hope everyone celebrating had a very happy Mother’s Day. C”

Like many amateur photographers, I do occasionally experiment with editing. I wanted to express my apologies for any confusion the family photograph we shared yesterday caused. I hope everyone celebrating had a very happy Mother’s Day. C

— The Prince and Princess of Wales (@KensingtonRoyal) March 11, 2024

A royal source claimed the princess had only made “minor adjustments” and tried to downplay the furore as a multitude of editing errors raised questions about whether the four were even together at the same time. The aide described the photograph as an “amateur and family” snap to illustrate an informal picture of the family and confirmed that William had taken the picture while Catherine had made the edits.

For a 1000 years the British monarchy has been at pains to have kings and queens out and about greeting the people. Seeing is believing and gives legitimacy to the crown.

So when Kensington Palace distributed a manipulated photo on Sunday of Princess Catherine with her three children to celebrate Mother’s Day, the palace’s trust with the nation took a sharp blow.

The photo itself was meant to be reassuring and fill the huge void created when Catherine, 42, was suddenly hospitalised and underwent major abdominal surgery in early January.

Instead the furore about the clearly altered photo has raised even more questions about what is really going on at Adelaide Cottage.

Catherine’s continued absence from engagements and lengthy recuperation has led to wild conspiracies about her health, fuelled in part by Prince William’s sudden and unexplained withdrawal from a memorial service for his Godfather the former King Constantine of Greece earlier this month.

The Princess of Wales was, however, sighted leaving Windsor Castle with Prince William overnight, a move experts said may be an attempt by the Palace to show “she’s up and about’’.

BREAKING: The Princess of Wales has been pictured leaving Windsor alongside Prince William, following controversy over a Mother's Day photograph Kate admitted to "editing".https://t.co/z2KAKjIpfs

📺 Sky 501, Virgin 602, Freeview 233 and YouTube pic.twitter.com/aXKPhvA7DJ

— Sky News (@SkyNews) March 11, 2024

That Catherine and William couldn’t trust a single professional photographer to take a quick family photo in recent days to quell the mounting conspiracy theories adds to the intrigue.

The palace said the photo was taken by William last week, but even that was questionable given the green tree shown in the background. England is still in hibernation from the winter.

The photo was distributed through photo agencies and some of the world’s biggest- Agence France Press, Associated Press, Reuters, Getty and Shutterstock - issued a “kill notice” on Monday, stopping the distribution.

AP said the recall occurred because: “At closer inspection, it appears that the source has manipulated the image”.

The Australian’s picture editor Milan Scepanovic said: “Authenticity is everything in news photo and this photo fails on a number of points.’’

One of the main giveaways is that the light source reflected in the eyes of the children is different to Catherine’s.

There is also unexplained softness in parts of the photo especially round Catherine’s hair on the left hand side of the photo.

One glaring error is that part of Princess Charlotte’s sleeve and wrist is missing and not aligned. Her skirt is also weirdly jutting out on the left hand side.

Mr Scepanovic said there were other odd aspects to the photo including some missing texture to Prince Louis’ jumper and that the curvature of Catherine’s right hand is at too acute an angle. There is no collapse of the jumper under her hand which would normally happen when she is cuddling her son.

Prince Louis is known for his playfulness but crossing his third and fourth fingers is most unusual.

It was unclear if the photo adjustments were made by a person attempting photoshop, or by prompts given to artificial intelligence.

Mr Scepanovic said the doctoring of the photo could have been done by a person or by AI.

“I feel it was AI: the prompts were given to the machine to create a certain result and it did it but the end result wasn’t scrutinised before being posted,’’ he said.

The circumstances of the photo being the first of Catherine since Christmas Day at Sandringham - apart from a grainy long distance picture of her in a car last week - had put extraordinary pressure on the palace to explain what happened.

However Kensington Palace is not the first to have manipulated an official image. Earlier this year the Danish royal family issued a photograph to mark the 13th birthday of Queen Mary and King Frederik’s youngest children, Prince Vincent and Princess Josephine. The released photograph of the twins was two cropped photographs lifted from a family image shot in October last year at the time of their brother, Prince Christian’s 18th birthday.