The Major Difference Between Kate Middelton's Scandal And Princess Diana

Conspiracy theories have exploded around an alleged fake photo of Catherine, Princess of Wales. According to The New York Post in a March 13 article, all of Kate Middleton's hard work over the years to build up a seemingly perfect image of herself has been endangered since she was forced to publicly confess to editing a U.K. Mother's Day photo of herself and her children. It's not unprecedented for portraits of royal family members to be doctored to make them look better. In fact, it's a tradition going back as far as King Henry VIII, whose painting was altered to make him look tall, young, and healthy (per The National Post).

Middleton had been out of the public eye since undergoing planned abdominal surgery in January, and the apparent secrecy about it by Kensington Palace has spurred quite a lot of speculation. Kategate, as some news outlets have called it, has fueled concern over her health and been compared to issues that involved Princess Diana in the 1990s.

Diana also struggled with maintaining her family's privacy from the surveilling eye of the paparazzi, and similarly, the royal family would like Middleton to be able to recover from her surgery in peace. But that's where the similarities end. Middleton's photo was doctored via modern image editing software, which wasn't as readily available back then, and so far, no digitally altered photos of Diana have ever surfaced.

The photo of Kate Middleton and her children was intended by Kensington Palace to reassure her adoring fans that she was doing well post-surgery. However, the level to which it was edited went far beyond simply color-correcting or clarifying elements that may have been in shadow, leaving followers to wonder if the royals are hiding her true health. The Associated Press removed the photo from their distribution on March 11, claiming that there's a limit as to how much a photo can be doctored before becoming untrustworthy.

On March 12, OK! quoted royal expert Neil Sean, who stated, "I think Catherine herself probably had the final say [on the photo]. And I think that what happened was probably in the rush she probably looked at and thought, 'you know, that looks okay' and didn't [give] too much attention to it." He went on to add, "I think that she's being very gracious in accepting the blame." 

Comparisons between Kate and Princess Diana grew after another photo was shared on March 11. According to Page Six, the image depicted Middleton in a car looking unhappy, and an insider stated his concern, saying, "I worry about all this attention on Catherine. She did not look happy at all in the car on Monday." He noted that the snap was similar to ones of Diana seated in a car and appearing unhappy as well, during her marital troubles with then-Prince Charles.

Amid the controversy surrounding Kate Middleton's health after her abdominal surgery, her husband William, Prince of Wales, can't seem to escape rumors that he's been allegedly having an affair with Rose Hanbury, Marchioness of Cholmondeley. Of course, as far as we can confirm that's simply gossip. Again, it's easy to draw similarities with Princess Diana. She and former husband King Charles III met in 1977 and seemed to have a fairy tale romance leading to their wedding in July 1981. However, as their marriage became strained, Diana had an affair with ex-army Major James Hewitt, and Charles was secretly seeing his old flame, Camilla Parker Bowles.

William and his brother Harry, Duke of Sussex, have tried hard to avoid the tabloid press, particularly given their mother Diana's death in a car accident while being chased by the paparazzi in 1997. The New York Times speculated that Kate and William likely thought they could circumvent the tabloid spotlight by turning to social media to control their own narrative, and the pic of Middleton post-surgery was intended to illustrate her good health. 

However, the extreme editing of the photo created exactly the opposite of what they intended to present to the public — a situation that Diana had never faced, and as such the circumstances of Kate and Diana couldn't be more different.