Yes, we’ve finally succumbed to the relentless speculation, frenzied coverage and just plain foolishness of Kate-Gate. We don’t know what this mania says about the Princess of Wales. But it surely speaks volumes about all of us.
In case you’ve been on a digital fast…
That’s the only possible reason you don’t know about the Wives of Windsor soap opera unfolding online. Here’s a quick timeline of the great disappearance:
Last known appearance: Catherine is last seen on December 25—Christmas Day—being a ‘good royal girl’—i.e exiting a church at the family’s Sandringham residence:
The big announcement: On January 17, the Palace let the world know that Kate underwent a “planned abdominal surgery.” She will remain in the hospital for 10 to 14 days. And she won’t be seen in public until after Easter—as in, March 31. William visits her in the hospital the next day. After she returns from the hospital, the Palace declares “She is making good progress.”
Where’s Willy? As Kate remains out of sight, the natives of merry England—and social media—grow restless. Their fears grow darker—and so do their theories. The tipping point: When William disappears… on a single occasion. On February 27, he fails to show up at a memorial service for his late godfather—former King Constantine II of Greece—for “personal reasons.” Eeks!!
If you’ve failed to appreciate the enormity of his absence, this is how CNN’s Royal News described the memorial: “If the role of monarchy is presence, continuity and unity, it was a stark visual seeing the royal family enter the chapel without several key senior faces among them.” Yes, a veritable catastrophe—as some pompous royal correspondent might say.
Questions are asked: Rather, imaginations run wild:
Something, some people theorised, had gone terribly wrong with Kate’s health. Perhaps she was in real danger of dying. Perhaps she was in an induced coma. Perhaps her marriage to William was on the rocks, and she was in hiding. Perhaps she’d been killed and would be replaced by a body double. As the story took off, the joke theories began to take up more space: Kate was waiting for bad bangs to grow out, or to recover from plastic surgery; she’d become the villain in the viral Willy Wonka experience.
The Palace is forced to issue yet another statement—insisting that the princess continues to do well. And grumpily points out that the palace “made it clear in January the timelines of the Princess’ recovery and we’d only be providing significant updates. That guidance stands.” That’s royal-speak for ‘Shut up already!’
Kate spotting! The princess is photographed on March 4 in the passenger seat of a car—alongside her mum. Only tabloids publish the image—but it marks the first ‘proof of life’. Maybe all is well… maybe.
Bad omen spotting! On March 5, the British Army posts an announcement—saying the Princess of Wales will attend an annual event on June 8—which is months away. And then the notice is mysteriously taken down. Double eeks!
PR disaster strikes! The Palace issues the infamous ‘manipulated’ photo on March 10—“Wishing everyone a Happy Mother’s Day.” Hours later, leading news agencies—like Associated Press and Reuters—declare the image has been “manipulated.” The internet loses its mind.
Disaster strikes again! The next day, the Palace’s social media handle shares an apology issued by Kate—“Like many amateur photographers, I do occasionally experiment with editing. I wanted to express my apologies for any confusion the family photograph we shared yesterday caused.” It only serves to further inflame the masses—and the media, both mainstream and tabloid. A blurry photo of her in yet another car with William fails to satisfy their bloodlust:
Well, it’s just bad PR, right?
That’s the general consensus of respectable royal observers. They all agree that the Windsors have once again failed the two things they are terrible at. One: being modern:
Someone should have spotted this, or realized the photographs had been doctored, and in doing so realized that in this day and age when people are so hot on AI—and rightly so—that you can't put out doctored pictures.
Two: being transparent:
It's really tough for them, there's no way back. The only way forward is to kind of explain themselves which they've tried to do, but people aren't buying it because the palace now aren't going to reveal the actual original image. It's all about trust.
Where we are now: Everyone is united in their demand: Show us Kate! Failing that, the original ‘unaltered’ photo. The Palace refuses to oblige. The stalemate is official—until the next dumbass PR move by the Windsors.
The visibility trap: Princess, show yourself!
The job description: Queen Elizabeth famously had two mottos she lived by. The first: ‘Never complain, never explain’. It hasn’t worked quite as well since the PR debacle over Diana’s death—and has been partly discarded. In any case, the first principle only works when you follow the second: ‘You have to be seen to be believed.’ Much of the fuss over Kate comes from a place of entitlement. It’s their goddamn job:
In a constitutional monarchy where kings and queens wield little actual, but plenty of soft power, visibility is everything. They may not be able to pass laws, negotiate treaties or order troops into battle, but the British royals can open supermarkets, attend premieres and visit the sick. Without that, like Barbie, what were they made for?
The performance review: If they’re going to disappear on the job—literally, in this case—then they deserve every tacky conspiracy theory coming their way:
By pulling back from public view, the country’s future king and queen—who also happen to be the most popular members of the family—violated that cardinal rule. In their absence—and fueled by the Palace’s inadequate explanations—conspiracies have thrived… “Had they [issued] a single instance of a photograph or a message or something, I think it would have been very good,” [royal expert Richard] Fitzwilliams says.
By that, we mean a photograph that’s sorta real and authentic—not clumsily doctored. Hence, all the hand-wringing about having betrayed the people’s “trust.” You have to be seen *and* believed.
FaceTune yourself: Of course, no one wants a pic of Kate looking haggard—perhaps with a colostomy bag. We want the royals to be transparent but not—god forbid!—true to life:
In a more abstract sense, the royal family’s legitimacy has always been rooted in a kind of mystique that bears little resemblance to the notion of truth as we understand it. The monarchy “depends on mystique and the tribal chief in his hut,” the famed British broadcaster David Attenborough reportedly once said. “If any member of the tribe ever sees inside the hut, then the whole system of the tribal chiefdom is damaged and the tribe eventually disintegrates.”
What everyone is clamouring for is tastefully tweaked Insta play that we’ve come to expect from our celebs:
By regularly posting family portraits taken by Kate, a self-styled amateur photographer, the couple were able to carefully curate their public image in a way that previous royals, whose images were more traditionally mediated through the press, could not. These images not only gave the Wales family an air of authenticity and relative normalcy, but it also made them more accessible to the online public.
We all know that Will & Kate are very good at this game—so there are no excuses for this #PhotoshopFail. That’s especially unforgivable at a time we’re all freaked out about AI.
Give us our sainted Kate…
Yes, people are illogically upset at this royal vanishing—more than any other. That’s because Catherine Middleton promised a return to old-fashioned royalty—the sturdy and reassuring kind. In her famous 2013 essay on the Windsors, author Hillary Mantel writes this of William’s wife:
Kate seems to have been selected for her role of princess because she was irreproachable: as painfully thin as anyone could wish, without quirks, without oddities, without the risk of the emergence of character. She appears precision-made, machine-made, so different from Diana whose human awkwardness and emotional incontinence showed in her every gesture. Diana was capable of transforming herself from galumphing schoolgirl to ice queen, from wraith to Amazon. Kate seems capable of going from perfect bride to perfect mother, with no messy deviation.
The stoic & sainted: Unlike Diana or Meghan, Kate could be relied on to weather the vagaries of marrying British royalty—which required, above all, to be unflinching in the line of fire. As El Pais notes, ‘Middle Class Kate’ has been stared at, dissected and heckled for decades:
They say Middleton never let it get to her. She also stoically withstood the media pressure. In 2004, when her courtship with the prince was already official, journalists incessantly asked a 22-year-old William if he had wedding plans. The young man would reply in horror that he didn’t want to get married until he was 28 or 30. The media then dubbed his future bride “Waity Katie.” Later, when she quit her job at clothing retail chain Jigsaw to prepare for her life in the royal family, they called her “Lazy Katie.”
And yet she persisted—her perfect smile or hair untouched.
The most famous image: of Catherine was taken hours after she’d fulfilled her breeding duty—and given birth to the heir to the throne. She has looked reliably immaculate since:
The royal women, particularly, are expected to meet nearly impossible expectations: to be always beautifully groomed, always pleasant, always available to their public, no matter the circumstances. Kate has traditionally done so with reliable goodwill. After the birth of each of her three children, Kate appeared dutifully in front of the hospital in full hair and makeup for a photo op for the paparazzi within 24 hours, and she did it with a cheerful smile each time to boot.
In fact, Town & Country offered a detailed comparison of the three triumphant appearances:
Surely, this chick can get it together for a post-surgery photo-op. As one well-wisher on X scoffed:
You’re telling me that Kate Middleton—the same woman who posed outside the hospital like a freaking supermodel mere hours after giving birth—suddenly requires months of recovery before showing her face? And the British press now magically respects privacy? This feels…sinister.
Kate the Saviour: In the wake of the catastrophic exit of Harry & Meghan, the future queen offered comfort to her subjects-to-be. She is now Catherine the Saint—comforting the afflicted much as her long-lost mother-in-law:
Following the death of William’s mother Diana in 1997, Brits have been longing for another compelling, if less troubled, fairy princess to gaze at on magazine covers. Kate with her immaculate style and happy brood of children brought a splash of colour and comfort in an otherwise troubled world: an unstable political arena which recently saw three prime ministers in the space of two months, a punishing cost of living crisis, war with Russia on the edge of Europe and events in the Middle East which have riven many communities.
But, but, but: Our Kate is not just the protector of the realm—but also of the royal family. There is no shortage of pundits predicting doom for the Windsors if their elder bahu were to falter—or disappear:
She is a star player for the royal family in a dangerous time of transition. She is always where she should be. “The inescapable truth is that in the unlikely event that the Cambridge marriage [between William and Kate] ever becomes troubled, the whole Windsor house of cards could come tumbling down,” writes [Tine] Brown in The Palace Papers. “Kate has become a cherished national icon of flawless motherhood.”
Or in the words of Diana’s own chief-of-staff: “It’s no exaggeration that the Windsors’ future lies in her hands.”
The bottomline: Hillary Mantel famously compared the royal family to pandas—that are “nice to look at”—albeit in a cage. But few remember how Mantel ended her essay, asking this for Kate:
It may be that the whole phenomenon of monarchy is irrational, but that doesn’t mean that when we look at it we should behave like spectators at Bedlam. Cheerful curiosity can easily become cruelty. It can easily become fatal. We don’t cut off the heads of royal ladies these days, but we do sacrifice them, and we did memorably drive one to destruction a scant generation ago. History makes fools of us, makes puppets of us, often enough. But it doesn’t have to repeat itself. In the current case, much lies within our control. I’m not asking for censorship. I’m not asking for pious humbug and smarmy reverence. I’m asking us to back off and not be brutes.
Reading list
As always, Vox has the most detailed overview. El Pais, Washington Post and TIME analyse the royal family’s PR flub. Hillary Mantel’s 2013 essay ‘Royal Bodies’ is a brilliant read. Charlie Warzel in The Atlantic is very good at calling out the hunger to “know everything.” If you’re Team Sussex, you may want to read this New York Times column on how Kate still has it better than Meghan. For the sexism angle, read this older Vogue and Atlantic pieces on the Kate vs Meghan ‘cat fight’. Also: Independent on why the Windsors needs its women—but treats them shoddily—and Elle on the pursuit of perfection. For more on the AI/doctored photos angle, read the Columbia Journalism Review.
