Last week was such a monumental moment in royal history. Kensington Palace issued a mangled, heavily manipulated Frankenphoto as proof of life for the Princess of Wales and all hell broke loose. AFP, AP, Getty and Reuters killed the Mother’s Day photo within twelve hours of its publication. CNN announced a review of all photos issued by Kensington Palace, and the global director of AFP told the BBC that they no longer consider Kensington Palace a “trusted source,” and compared the Frankenphoto to propaganda coming out of Iran and North Korea. This past weekend, Kensington Palace’s reaction was to call all of those media agencies “hypocrites” for killing the manipulated image, because those agencies have published other manipulated photos before! Considering that the palace issued several of those photos, this is an extremely wild defense and one which is still so shocking to me.

Speaking of, the Guardian had a somewhat odd piece about the palace’s history of releasing manipulated photos or even Frankenphotos (images cobbled together from multiple photos). As I said last week, Kensington Palace and Buckingham Palace both have a history of releasing manipulated photos and I even cited some examples in my coverage. The reason why none of those previous photos turned into a major, international fiasco is because they weren’t being used as proof of life for a princess who has been missing for nearly three months. The previous manipulated photos were used as just random royal propaganda. The Guardian is now citing the photo of Queen Elizabeth II with all of her white great-grandchildren, taken the summer QEII passed away (2022) and allegedly taken by Princess Kate. People knew it was a manipulated image at the time, but it wasn’t being offered up as anything other than “see, QEII was a racist who only wanted to spend time with her white great-grandkids, Harry and Meghan’s children weren’t invited!” Well, now the Guardian is admitting it too, that the photo was altered/manipulated:

The Mother’s Day incident must be alarming the relatively new team working for the couple. Prince William has recently appointed Sean Carney in the newly created role of chief executive, while Kate has just finally installed Lieutenant Colonel Tom White as private secretary, after a long gap without one. But perhaps the strangest element of the whole furore is not what the Princess of Wales or her staff at Kensington Palace did, it is the way the outside world has changed. Candid royal snaps issued directly to the press as “handouts” were once a token of authenticity. “In the past it was a way to guarantee a front page picture and present a genuine image of a strong family,” said Suart.

The Observer’s picture desk can show this weekend that rough-edges of the editing process were nothing new. The photograph taken by Catherine at Balmoral and released last year to mark what would have been the 97th birthday of the late Queen bears similar signs of digital alteration. Prince Louis appears to have been moved back into the frame, while locks of a great granddaughter’s hair show telltale repetitions. Back then, though, the image was not urgently “killed” by the leading international photo agencies, like the latest one, because it didn’t matter so much.

[From The Guardian]

Yeah, as I said, we knew when the QEII photo was released that the image had been significantly manipulated, but the reason why the agencies didn’t kill the image is because the message of the photo wasn’t a constitutional issue, but a personal, familial message to snub the Sussexes. This was Kate bullying her niece and nephew and making a posthumous suggestion that QEII only wanted to spend time with her white great-grandchildren. I’m including a tweet below which analyzed all of the “edits” to the photo, and I’m also including some other photos which were likely manipulated.

Did the late Queen ever pose with her grandchildren and great-grandchildren? Seems like no. 🤔 This photo, taken by Kate Middleton, was edited at least in 9 places. Now the mass media are reporting about it too.
A little thread👇

— Katerina 🇺🇦 (@Le__Katerina) March 17, 2024

Photos courtesy of Kensington Palace, Instar.

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