Update: I wrote all of this up about an hour ago, and then Kensington Palace published a portrait of Louis at 7:15 am EST.
Today is Prince Louis of Wales’s sixth birthday. You might not have realized it because Kensington Palace failed to post new photos of the birthday boy ahead of time. Usually, for the Wales kids’ birthdays, Kensington Palace will publish new birthday-portraits a day or two in advance, so all of the British papers can run them. That didn’t happen for Louis’s birthday this year – no advanced photos, and they just released a pic within the past few minutes.
Happy 6th Birthday, Prince Louis!
Thank you for all the kind wishes today.
The Princess of Wales pic.twitter.com/TxshrI3WKO
— The Prince and Princess of Wales (@KensingtonRoyal) April 23, 2024
This is the first Wales-kid birthday since Kensington Palace blamed the Princess of Wales for cobbling together the Mother’s Day frankenphoto. That Mother’s Day pic led to Reuters, AP, CNN, AFP and Getty issuing kill orders on the photo, and it also led to larger questions and investigations into palace-issued photos, some/many of which have been manipulated. AFP’s director compared KP to North Korea and it was a huge controversy. Remember when William and Kate’s advisor told the Times that the frankenphoto kill order was “hypocritical” because those media agencies have been publishing manipulated photos from the palace for a while? Yeah. It was bad.
It’s interesting that KP just went with a photo taken by Kate. For months, it felt like William and Kate’s mindset is: if you don’t like our manipulated photos, we’re just not going to issue ANY photos anymore, how about that? Like, they don’t realize that there’s a hidden option: they could just hire a real photographer to take some portraits of Louis and simply release those pics in a straight-forward fashion without manipulation.
Also: this is the first time we’ve seen Prince Louis since Christmas 2023. George was seen with his father on April 11th, at a football match. But the two younger kids had not been photographed at all since December 25, 2023. I would also argue that we have not had a credible and independently verifiable sighting of the Princess of Wales since Christmas as well.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Kensington Palace, Cover Images.