The furore over the edited Mother's Day photo of Princess Kate and her three children has yet to show any signs of dying down. And now a royal expert has warned there may only be one way out for Kensington Palace, that might help them end the flurry of speculation online about the state of the Princess of Wales' health.
Kate, who underwent abdominal surgery in January, is currently recovering in private, away from royal duties, and is not expected to return to public life until at least Easter.
When a photo to mark Mother's Day was released and distributed to news agencies an d swiftly recalled on the grounds of suspected "manipulation," the wild speculation online reached a fever pitch.
A personal apology from the Princess of Wales about any "confusion" caused by her attempts to edit the family photo did little to silence the speculation, and an expert has warned that the Palace may only be left with one way forward to minimise the level of conspiracy theories surrounding her absence from the public eye - and noted that the royals editing official photographs isn't anything new.
Jennie Bond, writing for the i newspaper, explained that "pictures have been doctored since the middle of the 19th century," noting specifically that this is a tradition that can be traced from Victorian times until the modern day: "Queen Victoria's pictures were sometimes enhanced to make her look younger, and the photographer who took official wedding photos of Edward and Sophie (now Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh) admitted he had digitally altered one shot because Prince William hadn't looked happy enough."
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Since the camera was first invented, the monarchy has had a hand in its trajectory, with Prince Albert and Queen Victoria both helping to popularise the new technology - and establishing a ground-breaking way of creating a sense of direct communication with the public themselves by releasing images of the family. This method of communicating helped create "strong emotional bonds between individual members of the general public and royal families," creating a connection between subject and ruler that some academics have argued helped monarchies survive.
However, the last decade has seen smartphones proliferate society, and these days, everyone has the capacity to take and edit photographs at the end of their fingertips - with the technology widely accessible, it also means that people can sometimes more easily spot an edited image than perhaps they once would have done, particularly if there are errors as there were in the recent Mother's Day photograph. When Victoria and Albert became patrons of the Photographic Society in 1853, cameras were only a burgeoning technology: expensive and time-consuming they were not something that normal people could use with any regularity.
Bond explains that with the conspiracies yet to quiet down, there is one thing that the palace could do that would be "helpful" and silence further speculation - release a video of the Princess of Wales.
"There are calls for the original photo to be released," Bond explained, "which might be wise. But the Palace is unlikely to react to social media pressure. It would, however, be helpful if it could issue some video footage of the Princess in the very near future. The Mother's Day picture suggests she is, indeed, 'doing well'. She looks relaxed, happy and comfortable. And to confirm once and for all that this debacle was cock-up rather than conspiracy, the Palace — and the Princess — might have to accept a compromise and release a short film."
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