According to official sources, the family portrait in which Kate Middleton appears, surrounded by her children George, Charlotte and Louis, was immortalized by Prince William in the week of March 4.
Since then, multiple press agencies have unpublished the photo, which they consider to be retouched.
The Princess of Wales, for her part, apologized for having made an “edit”, assuring that she did not wish to sow confusion.
Since the “abdominal surgery” she underwent in mid-January, conspiracy theories have nevertheless flourished on the web.
Among them, that of “the November photo”.
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A hypothesis formulated in a TikTok viewed more than 1.6 million times.
According to Allyn Aston, singer and podcaster, the family portrait would indeed have been immortalized during the fall of 2023. The videographer thus indicated that the photograph could date from the day when Prince William's wife and her children visited the Baby Bank, a charity that distributes second-hand clothing, equipment and accessories for children.
A visit during which Wales' outfits appear, according to Allyn Aston, "remarkably similar" to those they wear in the family portrait.
Also read: Was the photo of Kate Middleton and Prince William leaving Windsor Castle also retouched?
Sweaters of Discord
Allyn Aston thus carried out her personal investigation into the “fake” photo of Kensington Palace, and consulted various blogs devoted to the outfits of the princess and her children.
But it was indeed the silhouettes of Kate Middleton and George, Charlotte and Louis, photographed during this visit to the Baby Bank, which seemed identical to those of the famous family portrait.
"I thought it was a coincidence, until I saw the photo of Princess Charlotte's red ruched collar sweater, and I thought, 'Wait, that's the exact same color and collar on the new photo.'” The podcaster thus estimated that the princess's clothes were very similar in the November 2023 video and the family portrait, although some of them were of different colors.
Kate Middleton's beige Reiss sweater, worn during the visit to the Baby Bank, also has the same cut as the one in the family portrait.
The princess is also said to be wearing the same jeans and ankle boots in both photos.
Others have formulated a different theory, according to which Kate Middleton's face is a copy and paste of the one she displayed on the cover of
Vogue UK
, in 2016. The
Sun
has since revealed that Kate Middleton had retouched three times the family portrait.
Phil Chetwynd, the AFP's news director, has since said the agency no longer considers Kensington Palace a "reliable source" at all.