What is being concealed?

Calls for Kate’s original photo get louder and louder

How is Princess Kate really doing? After the furor over a fake Mother's Day photo, the voices are getting louder and louder that something is not quite right.

(Bild: APA / AP Photo/Frank Augstein, Pool)

Following the furor over an edited Mother's Day photo of Princess Kate, it is becoming increasingly clear that something is not quite right. Why is the palace refusing to publish the original photo - and therefore the truth? "Something is not right," says an insider.

"The idea that Kate can't even sit through a photo shoot tells me the situation is much worse than anyone knows," a source told the New York Post.

"Deeply concerned"
According to the report, the source is "deeply concerned" and hinted that Kate Middleton's health problems could be more serious than initially thought. Royal expert Patrick Handscombe also has doubts about the photo and the explanation that Kate tinkered with it.

"I can't imagine that with the best will in the world. The Princess has retired to recuperate and is now editing photos? That's what William and she have their team for," he told Bild.

Many questions
Background to the scandal: Since Kate's abdominal operation on 16 January and her disappearance from the public eye for weeks, wild theories have been circulating about her condition.

The palace always claimed that Kate was fine, but many fans remained skeptical. And for good reason!

After Kate Middleton published a family photo on Mother's Day, which at first glance shows her as radiantly beautiful and healthy as ever with her three children, an unprecedented scandal broke out: several news agencies withdrew the photo as it had been digitally edited. 

Princess Kate admitted that she had edited the Mother's Day picture herself.

(Bild: APA/AFP/KENSINGTON PALACE/Prince of Wales)

Many discrepancies
Photoshop experts immediately noticed many inconsistencies: Princess Charlotte's hair ends abruptly over her shoulder on one side, for example, and her left wrist is wider than her sleeve. There also seems to be something wrong with Charlotte's skirt and her right sleeve is showing through at one point.

Kate's zipper has been tinkered with, her wedding ring is missing and there are many doubts about whether the photo was actually taken in the last week. According to British media, it has been learned from the palace that William took a series of photos of Kate on the Friday before Mother's Day with a Canon camera and then edited them. 

A dim paparazzi photo showed the princess in her mother's car last week and her face looked puffier and wider. 

Some of the inconsistencies in Kate's picture.

(Bild: APA/AFP/KENSINGTON PALACE/Prince of Wales)

"Experiment occasionally"
Kate admitted on X the next day that it was she herself who had touched up the photo. Like all amateur photographers, she would like to experiment with image editing and she wanted to apologize for the "confusion".

Like many amateur photographers, I also occasionally experiment with image editing. I want to apologize for the confusion caused by the family photo we shared yesterday. I hope everyone celebrating had a happy Mother's Day. C

Kates Entschuldigung für ihren Foto-Fail auf X

Original under lock and key
Shortly after Kate posted the tweet, the palace told British media that the original photo, taken by Prince William, would not be released. Of course, the question now arises as to what it might reveal that the public should not know.

Even Piers Morgan, the normally royal-friendly British presenter and self-confessed critic of Meghan, now senses a cover-up: "The palace should release the unedited photo of Kate and the children as soon as possible!" he ranted on X (formerly Twitter). "If it's just a small, harmless retouch that went wrong, no one will care."

Morgan warned, "If they don't release the original photo, the conspiracy theories they're trying to destroy will get much worse..."