The latest development in the drama swirling around Catherine, Princess of Wales, aka Kate Middleton, involves yet another picture. This time, the princess was spotted traveling in a car alongside her husband, Prince William; you can see the paparazzi photo at People, among other places. It's not a great picture—she's only seen in profile and shadow, looking out the vehicle's window as her husband, in the foreground, appears to look at his phone. Sources aren't giving out much information about the photo other than to say Kate was dropped off at a private appointment and William traveled on to a church service. Not surprisingly, the snap did little to quiet the rampant speculation about what the heck is going on with Kate, and outlets including E! Online and Town & Country are offering timelines to catch the uninitiated up on the conspiracy theories:
- December 2023: Kate is seen attending a Christmas morning service with the rest of the royal family, which remains her most recent public engagement.
- January 2024: Kensington Palace announces Kate has undergone "planned abdominal surgery" and will be recovering for weeks, with no plans to return to royal duties until after Easter. Weeks later, the palace says she's been released from the hospital and is making good progress.
- January and February 2024: Hours after the surgery announcement, Buckingham Palace announces King Charles will be checking into a hospital to have an enlarged prostate treated; days after his release, the palace announces he's been diagnosed with an unspecified type of cancer that was discovered during the prostate treatment. (Amid all this, another ex-royal was also diagnosed with cancer.)
- End of February 2024: The rumor mill starts to ramp into high gear when William abruptly cancels a royal engagement, and the "where is Kate?" movement begins in earnest. The palace responds in early March by reiterating its previous statement on Kate's recovery. (Days prior, Thomas Kingston, a member of the British royal family and Pippa Middleton's ex, died of an apparent suicide—an apparently unrelated tragedy that nonetheless has been mentioned in some of the speculation swirling around the Kate situation.)
- March 2024: Days after the canceled engagement and the palace's defiant statement, paparazzi snap Kate in the passenger seat of a vehicle driven by her mother. Not long after that, the UK army adds some confusion to the mix by claiming Kate would be at an upcoming event and then backtracking on that claim, and William addresses the whole situation by... not really addressing it.
- Most recently: Then came the official release of a family photo showing Kate and her three kids, which was quickly determined to have been digitally altered in some way, leading the princess herself to apparently release an explanation on social media that, yes, she had been experimenting with photo editing. And last but not least comes this most recent photo of her sitting next to William.
- More on the latest pic: The Daily Beast reports the new picture of Kate and William appears to have been taken with their "tacit consent," and as such is being published in UK newspapers. The photo of Kate in the car with her mother, on the other hand, appears to have been unauthorized and thus is not being printed in the UK. (There are also questions about why Kate looks so different in the car picture with her mom versus the doctored image released by the palace showing her with her kids.)
- Oh, and also: Amid all this there has also been mention of Rose Hanbury, Kate's longtime friend and the alleged onetime mistress of William, despite the fact that she has absolutely no official connection to the whole thing. That hasn't stopped commenters on social media from speculating that she is somehow linked.
The princess "has apologized and graciously so," a palace insider told
People following Kate's post regarding the photo editing. "She has done something that 99% of us do—and we don't have the scrutiny that they do." (More
Kate Middleton stories.)
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