Recently, Kate Middleton shocked the entire world with the announcement that she had been diagnosed with cancer and was undergoing chemotherapy. This effectively ended months of speculation about her health and what the Palace was trying to hide from the world.
With any luck, this announcement means that William and Kate can stop worrying about lying to the world and focus instead on helping Kate recover. However, looking back at months of increasingly obvious lies, it’s obvious that the Royal Family has a trust problem in which the average person (both within the UK and without) may no longer believe anything they have to say.
How did the Palace get to this point? What were the biggest lies about Kate Middleton they tried to sell, and what does this mean for the future of the Royal Family? Keep reading to find out!
Public suspicions were raised almost immediately
All of the recent drama and speculation surrounding Kate Middleton’s health began back in January. That was when we got an official statement that she would be undergoing abdominal surgery soon and then wouldn’t be making any official appearances until Easter.
Skeptics were suspicious almost immediately because, quite frankly, there is no routine abdominal surgery that would require someone to spend months recovering. At this point, critics pointed out how many details were being left out…for example, Kate never confirmed what diagnosis had sent her to the hospital or what exact surgical procedure she would receive. In what we now know to be a very grimly ironic lie, the one thing the Palace confirmed about her health at this time was that she hadn’t received a cancer diagnosis.
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The photo editing debacle
As public speculation mounted that the Royal Family was hiding something terrible about Kate Middleton, the Palace began a form of damage control that included several attempts to reassure everyone that the future Queen of England was alive and well. One of the most extreme attempts was releasing a photo of Kate with her children to celebrate Mother’s Day in England.
Once the photo came out, eagle-eyed fans noticed weird little details (like a missing wedding ring) indicating that the image may have been digitally edited. This was confirmed when the Associated Press refused to run the image in their publications because it was obvious the Palace had manipulated it. Even as someone who was ostensibly Kate tweeted out that she was simply experimenting with photo editing, a theory went viral that this image had recycled Kate’s face from a 2016 Vogue cover.
An attempt to use a Kate doppelganger?
Last week, we got what was meant to be the clearest indicator yet that Kate Middleton was alive and doing well. That was when a video came out of her and Prince William walking together and looking happy at a farm shop. Most people (including a former butler of King Charles) assumed this was a bit of crisis management on the part of the Royal Family. Unfortunately, it didn’t go quite as planned.
The same critics that this video was meant to reassure immediately noticed that the footage was shot from very far away and there were many visual obstructions (namely, a bunch of cars between the camera and the royals). Some online did freeze-frame analysis and believed that this wasn’t even Kate but one of the doppelgangers the Palace is rumored to use. Whether it was really Kate or not, though, the video did nothing to allay concerns about her health and the Palace’s ability to tell the truth.
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Kate’s shocking diagnosis revealed
Recently, Kate appeared in a video message to confirm that she has been diagnosed with cancer and has been undergoing chemotherapy. She insisted that nobody knew anything about the cancer when she went in for her planned surgery but that later tests revealed signs of cancer in her body.
Even as Kate confidently told the world she was continuing to get better, many of us couldn’t help but think about the many weird lies the Royal Family told to try to keep this scandal at bay. Before Kate revealed her diagnosis, the Palace even put out a statement saying that she was working from home on a major project. In retrospect, the Royal Family calling cancer a work-from-home project is just morally repugnant.
What does this mean for the modern Royal Family?
It sounds like Kate Middleton really is doing better, and all our thoughts and prayers go with her. However, we can’t ignore the fact that in trying to safeguard Kate’s privacy, the Royal Family may have permanently eroded the public trust.
For example, we may not know the timeline of when the Palace learned certain information, but Kate just casually confirmed her diagnosis as the one thing the Palace insisted she didn’t have. This revelation only happened after the Palace bungled almost every single attempt to reassure the public as to her condition.
Of course, we’re sensitive to the idea that Kate Middleton has the right to keep any and all of her health information private. But we’re left with a rather chilling question: if the Royal Family would engage in all these lies just to protect the world’s worst-kept secret, what else are they lying about, and how long will it be (if ever!) before we find out?