As someone who has extensively covered the Windsors’ lies, racism, colonialism, misogyny, stupidity and incompetence for years, this year has been like Christmas to me. It’s also unnerving to watch a global audience suddenly sit up and pay attention to every weird and shady thing that’s happened recently with the Windsors, specifically Prince William and Kate. There’s a combination of factors at play in 2024: Kate’s disappearance, the secrecy around her “abdominal surgery,” William’s weeks-long disappearances, his evident day-drinking, the weird TMZ photo of Kate and Carole in the Audi, and now, this huge catastrophe around the palace-released Mother’s Day photo. All of which to say, when outlets like People Magazine are calling out Kensington Palace for incompetence and poor management, there are much deeper problems.
Kate Middleton’s photo editing controversy is “damning,” a top London PR expert tells PEOPLE exclusively. Mark Borkowski, a London-based public relations and crisis communications expert, tells PEOPLE that in trying to share a new image with the public, the palace hasn’t calmed concerns — “in fact, it’s made it worse.”
“Now some people are asking if it is all generated by AI or is it a Photoshop of a photo taken. It’s not something you’d want the royal brand to be aligned with,” he says.
A palace insider downplayed the PR crisis, telling PEOPLE exclusively that although the situation is a “bump in the road, it’s not an earthquake.”
“[Kate] has apologized and graciously so,” the insider says. “She has done something that 99% of us do — and we don’t have the scrutiny that they do. Think of the level of scrutiny of pictures of her, as people pore over them,” the insider continues. “You’re always on display and always got to be perfect. She might be a member of the royal family, but she’s also a human being. If you’ve just had an operation, you want to look your best with the first photograph that’s published for the outside world.”
Borkowski points out that while the royal family’s policy was “never complain, never explain” during Queen Elizabeth’s reign, “The royals have got themselves cornered by giving some level of information but never enough.” He adds this “halfway” approach “has resulted in this rather unfortunate photo driving a story where perhaps it would normally be shrugged off.”
The palace insider says, “When you think of last week’s paparazzi photo of her and her mother — she doesn’t want a photo like that to be the one everyone remembers.”
Borkowski says the royal household has the ability to bounce back after a mistake, but this instance will have far-reaching consequences. “The difficulty now is because there is so little information about what’s happening to Kate, if they were going to project things are all normal in this way — with a photo that is now deemed to be fake — it is pretty damning about the floundering and the poor decision making that’s going on,” he says.
The palace insider crying about the “scrutiny” Kate is under… like, at first, we just wanted to know what the hell happened to her and why she disappeared for over two months. Now that most people are convinced that she’s alive and conscious, the conversation is about how badly these “insiders” have managed the situation. This isn’t about Kate editing some photos because she feels vulnerable – this is about a taxpayer-funded monarchy lying to the public because they arrogantly underestimated the public’s intelligence. This is not a personal issue, it’s a constitutional issue for Britain.
Also, this is sinister: “When you think of last week’s paparazzi photo of her and her mother — she doesn’t want a photo like that to be the one everyone remembers.” Why would that be “the one everyone remembers” when Kate is supposedly recuperating, wearing jeggings, taking car rides and being dropped off for private appointments? Why are they acting like last week’s photo was the LAST TIME Kate will ever be photographed???
Kate Middleton Seen in Public for First Time Since Mystery Hospitalization | Click to read more https://t.co/O7zlxZfiCY
— TMZ (@TMZ) March 4, 2024
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images, Kensington Palace.