Royal Fans Take Closer Look At Kate Middleton's 2016 Vogue Cover After Her Photo Apology

Ever since the internet got its hooks on Catherine, Princess of Wales' first family photo since her January surgery, the frenzy of speculation and theories surrounding her have ratcheted up to all-time-high levels. Kate Middleton conspiracy theories exploded amid the fake photo-op accusations, which culminated in Kate confessing to editing the suspicious U.K. Mother's Day portrait. Another photo of Kate is now under scrutiny and assumed to have been used in the photoshopped picture.

Ruby Naldrett works on the social media team for the Daily Mirror and the Daily Star. After all the photo drama went down, Naldrett shared a photo of Kate's Vogue cover shoot from 2016 on X, formerly known as Twitter. She then layered Kate from the 2024 Mother's Day picture over the top of it and showed a time-lapse where the 2024 picture fades into the 2016 picture. Naldrett captioned the tweet, "my analysis of the kate middleton photo saga is that they took her face from the vogue cover she did years ago and edited it in."

my analysis of the kate middleton photo saga is that they took her face from the vogue cover she did years ago and edited it in pic.twitter.com/JLXts08zp5

— Ruby Naldrett (@rubynaldrett) March 11, 2024

Following her now-viral tweet about the Catherine, Princess of Wales, photoshop fail, Ruby Naldrett was interviewed by one of the publications she works with, the Daily Star. She explained that she and her friends thought the Mother's Day photo of Kate Middleton looked very familiar. They started "merging" it with other published photos of Kate to see which ones were almost the same.

Naldrett realized the Vogue photoshoot was the one that seemed the most similar. She said, "I sent it to my chat and they all agreed instantly and then I merged the pictures together and it was pretty much a perfect match."

The theory Naldrett posited on X received mixed feedback. Some people were on board with it, but not everyone believed it. They pointed out that of course the photos are similar since it's the same Kate Middleton smiling in both. On that, Naldrett told the Daily Star, "I know a lot of people disagree and say it's normal for someone to look the same way but the pictures are eight years apart and almost exactly the same. It's just a theory and it could be wrong, but I think the only real way they can put a stop to all these theories is by releasing the original (un)edited image."

An expert has spoken up on the Catherine, Princess of Wales, photos, and he seemed to disprove Ruby Naldrett's theory that the Vogue photoshoot picture was involved in the botched photoshop. Eliot Higgins founded Bellingcat, which conducts investigative journalism research on a variety of human rights and environmental issues. His skills gave him the knowledge needed to disprove Naldrett's hypothesis. Higgins shared on X, "When I first saw this I assumed it was a parody, but I was clearly mistaken." 

In a reply to that tweet, Higgins listed differences between the two photos: "There's so many minor differences, like the reflection of the light in her pupils, the light and shadow on her face, the teeth visible, wrinkles, etc etc, that it's clearly just a photo of the same woman from about the same angle, not the same exact photo." Higgins quipped in a third reply, "It hurts my brain that I even have to point this out, I think I'm going to go bed and hope people become more sensible overnight."

Perhaps all the speculation surrounding the photos will cause people to be more discerning of what they see on the internet. One person joked about that, tweeting a photo of the late Queen Elizabeth II with the fictional Paddington Bear in a reply to Naldrett's tweet, writing, "The Kate Middleton Photo Scandal has now got me seriously questioning this."