What happened to Kate Middleton and Prince William? Royal drama and conspiracy theories explained
Kensington Palace is always trying to keep rumors at bay about the Royal Family. For the past few months, they’ve been playing a mad game of whack-a-mole.
Sunday was Mother’s Day in the UK and the Prince and Princess of Wales released a photo of Kate Middleton, taken by William, and their three children with the caption “Thank you for your kind wishes and continued support over the last two months.” This was the first official photo of the Princess since Kensington Palace announced that Kate had undergone a “planned abdominal surgery” in January.
Soon after though what was a well wishing to all and intention to show that Kate was on the mend stoked the flames ever higher of growing conspiracy theories surrounding her conspicuous absence since having gone to hospital. Online sleuths were quick to notice that the image had been doctored and accusations that some kind of Palace cover-up began to fly.
Fans and royal watchers have ventured a number of theories such as the Mother’s Day picture was created by AI, that Kate’s hospitalization was more serious than stated and that the royal couple is breaking up. The more whacky ideas include that the Princess got a Brazilian butt lift (BBL) and that Prince William shot a relative. Here’s how the ball got rolling.
What happened to Kate Middleton and Prince William? Royal drama and conspiracy theories explained
Kensington Palace is always trying to keep rumors at bay about the Royal Family. For the past couple months, they’ve been playing a mad game of whack-a-mole.
The Palace released an official statement on 17 January regarding Kate’s medical procedure and said that she would be in hospital for 10 to 14 days. Furthermore, that the Princess would unlikely return to public duties until after Easter, meaning in April.
However, three days later Concha Calleja, a Spanish journalist and host of ‘Fiesta’, asserted that Kate had in fact been hospitalized on 28 December. This helped to spark an explosion of conspiracy theories. Furthermore, a week later she said that there had been complications and that doctors had to place Kate in an induced coma.
The following day, Kensington Palace said Kate was “making good progress,” and would return home to Windsor Castle to continue her recovery there at home. However, none of the media assembled around the hospital photographed the Princess of Wales leave.
On top of that, Calleja’s claims were gaining traction so much so that a Palace spokesperson went on the record, an uncommon act, saying the Spanish journalists made no attempt to fact-check anything said with members of the royal household. “It’s fundamentally, totally made-up, and I’ll use polite English here: it’s absolutely not the case,” they said.
Additional absences from the scene like the royal children not visiting the hospital in-person and Prince William not being sighted even though he was said to visit every day kept the rumor mill wheels spinning. Kate’s parents too, it was realized, had not been seen in public since Kate’s surgery had been announced adding fuel to the conspiracy flames.
Then, William pulled out of a memorial service for his godfather the late King Constantine of Greece at Windsor due to “a personal matter.” The same day, Buckingham Palace announced the death of Thomas Kingston, but that was not given as the reason for William’s absence at the memorial service triggering more conspiracy talk. Kingston had once dated Pippa Middleton, Kate’s sister.
Skipping forward to Mother’s Day and the now infamous photo that agencies recalled after it became obvious it had been photoshopped causing embarrassment. Kate apologized but the matter still fed into the ongoing paranoia.
The whole episode has been taking a toll on the Prince and Princess of Wales. The Daily Mail reports that the couple “has been deeply upset and angered” by “vicious social media speculation about the nature of the princess’s condition.”