What the Royal family is finding is that two things can co-exist: people can, and do, feel sympathy towards Princess Kate and her cancer diagnosis, but people are also now rightfully suspicious of anything the palace releases.
Getty added a note to the video stating that “handout clip was provided by a third-party organisation and may not adhere to Getty Images’ editorial policy”, which feels like a very diplomatic way of saying “guys, this feels a bit dodgy”.
It’s one in a series of incidents involving images, and now even video, released by the royals recently that have been clouded by suspicions of manipulation. Last month, the infamous heavily edited Mother’s Day photo of Kate and her children saw international photo agencies such as AP, Reuters, and others, withdrawing it from circulation. After the incident, AFP also announced that Kensington Palace is no longer a trusted source of information and, since then, doubts have been cast over the editing of previous photos issued by the Royal Family, including a portrait of the late Queen and some of her grandchildren. This is no small detail. When random people like you and I question, we’re mostly just noise - but when an international news agency says something like this, it has the potential to become a defining moment in that royal family’s history.
Regardless of whether people were right or wrong to question Kate’s whereabouts during the weeks she was out of the public eye, the way the palace has handled the situation over the last few months has been nothing if not an unmitigated disaster - and the ways they have chosen to handle it often ended up adding fuel to the speculation fire.
Sure, there is a world in which this is all a crazy misunderstanding and there is nothing else going on behind closed palace doors (unlikely, if you ask me, and I know you didn’t), but the issue is deeper than that: it’s about the public perception of a family that essentially relies on that same public perception to stay relevant.
A picture may be worth a thousand words but, for the royals, that currency exchange is not looking good these days, as doubts will cloud any future photo and video releases and people have been left wondering if what they are looking at is the real deal. For an institution like the British royal family, public trust is everything, and beyond the gossip headlines and the funny memes, that really is what is at stake here.
Time will tell how they will continue to navigate their way out of the situation, as the impact of this scandal (one of a few in recent times) on the British monarchy as it currently stands is yet to be fully determined. One thing is for sure: the Queen’s motto of “never complain, never explain” is out of the window and now the royals have some serious explaining to do.
