Princess Kate picture was meant to calm rumors but instead made them worse

Only a select few know exactly how an edited family photo became the latest crisis to engulf Britain’s royal family.

LONDON — Only a select few know exactly how an edited family photo became the latest crisis to engulf Britain’s royal family, a rolling controversy that raises fundamental questions about the transparency and accountability of this millennium-old institution.

What is clear — royal and communications experts said — is that Kensington Palace, the household of William and Kate, the Prince and Princess of Wales, has sorely mishandled the situation, perhaps owing to the family’s decades-old animus toward the media and resulting struggle to keep their lives private, despite their public profile and taxpayer-funded millions.

“We know that William, like Harry, is very stubborn and isn’t brilliant at taking advice, particularly when it comes to the privacy of his family,” said NBC News royal commentator Daisy McAndrew, referring to the heir to the throne and his younger brother. “He is particularly fanatical about keeping his children’s childhoods as normal as possible, keeping them as private as possible.”

But in releasing scant details, “they’ve inadvertently increased the speculation, not decreased the speculation,” McAndrew added, “and actually made the situation worse.”

This is the story of how Kate had not been seen in public for more than two months following unexplained abdominal surgery, how online conspiracy theories about her condition and whereabouts filled the vacuum left by the lack of palace-issued information and how the family’s attempts to silence that noise by releasing a photo backfired Sunday after it quickly emerged the image had been altered.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/princess-kate-picture-photoshop-rumors-royals-surgery-rcna142917

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