The year is still young but already the Mother’s Day photograph of Catherine, Princess of Wales and her three children — Princes George and Louis and Princess Charlotte — taken by her husband, Prince William, has become one of the photographs of the year.
The photo caused a sensation for being killed by the Associated Press (AP), Getty Images and Reuters, which regularly supply photographs to news organizations around the world, because it was doctored. Catherine apologized for the clumsy Photoshopping, but that was just the beginning of the firestorm in the media about how the PR debacle came to be.
There are those who say it’s just a tempest in an English teapot and that we should leave “Kate” and her family alone. Quite, but there’s more to it than that, isn’t there? For one thing, I think savvy royal watcher Tina Brown is right when she told “CBS Mornings” that it’s not a retouched photo but more than one photo cobbled together.
I don’t hold with the conspiracy theorists who think this was done by someone within the palace circle who wants to bring down the monarchy or that the royals of Montecito — Harry and Meghan, Duke and Duchess of Sussex — are happy about it. They’d have to be horrible people to take pleasure in what his brother and sister-in-law are going through. They may be misguided, but I don’t think they’re monsters.
No, Occam’s Razor says the simplest explanation is the right one, and the simple truth here is that she is unwell and therein lies the problem. When Kensington Palace announced her abdominal surgery in January, the Prince and Princess of Wales should’ve been upfront then about specifics. Yes, we’re all entitled to our privacy. Bur public figures have of necessity greater limits placed on theirs, as Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III discovered when he tried to keep his prostate cancer and hospital stay secret.
Catherine is no longer Kate Middleton, as some still insist on calling her. She is Catherine, Princess of Wales, wife of the heir to the throne, mother of his heir and the future queen of England. What the palace should’ve said was issued an initial statement with a specific diagnosis and target return date. Period, done, end of story until Mother’s Day when the family could’ve selected a recent photo, dated it and said, “Happy Mother’s Day.”
Instead, it’s been a drip, drip, drip of disinformation that rather than protect the family’s privacy has invaded it further. First, it was planned surgery even though she had to cancel some engagements so it couldn’t have been planned too far in advance, could it? Sounds serious and somewhat urgent to me. Then the palace had to say it was noncancerous without being specific, leading to more speculation. Then her name appeared on the list for Trooping the Colour in June and then it was removed. This was followed by the photo disaster.
By now, it’s clear that Catherine — who hasn’t put a foot wrong in 13 years in the public eye — and the royal family are torn between reassuring the public and healing away from prying eyes. The irony is that she might’ve been given more space had she simply said what was actually wrong to begin with and then made it clear there would be no further appearances or commentary until she resumed her duties.
Leadership — and Catherine is part of the United Kingdom’s leadership team, one of its MVPs, make no mistake about that — is about transparency and trust, even when you want nothing more than to crawl under the covers and shut out the world. Whatever else you do, you must tell the truth, even if it seems like an invasion of privacy, because partial information will only invite more prying.
As much as we all might want to be private figures, privacy ends where public responsibility begins.