How the Kate Middleton Story Flew So Spectacularly Off the Rails

Where is Kate Middleton?

It's a question that was asked a lot in the two months after Kensington Palace shared that the Princess of Wales had undergone "planned abdominal surgery" and would be "unlikely to return to public duties until after Easter." And as time went by, people started to point out that she really hadn't been seen in that's-definitely-her fashion since Christmas...

So while there was, in actuality, no reason to think Kate was anywhere other than home at Adelaide Cottage in Windsor (or at one of their other historic residences) with Prince William and their children, Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis, that answer never seemed to suffice for those who decided—whether early on or eventually—that something more complicated was at play.

Well, something more complicated was happening, though not in the true-crime-podcast way that some of the discourse suggested.

A few days after news broke of a possible records breach at the hospital where she had surgery, Kate shared in a March 22 video message that she's undergoing treatment for cancer. 

When she had surgery in January, the 42-year-old explained, "it was thought that my condition was non-cancerous. The surgery was successful. However, tests after the operation found cancer had been present."

Doctors prescribed a course of "preventative chemotherapy" and she's in the "early stages of that treatment," Kate continued. "This of course came as a huge shock, and William and I have been doing everything we can to process and manage this privately for the sake of our young family."

She noted that William has been "a great source of comfort and reassurance," and gracefully thanked the public "for all your wonderful messages of support and for your understanding" while she recovered.

To be sure, there were always well-wishers going about their day and hoping—whatever the inevitable explanation was—that Kate was going to be OK, end of story. But that couldn't prevent a simultaneously unfolding narrative that at times went wildly off the rails.

Whether the hysteria over Kate's whereabouts and well-being would have reached such a fever pitch without the simultaneous uncertainty surrounding the health of King Charles III—who shared Feb. 5 that he was undergoing treatment for an undisclosed type of cancer—will remain one of life's unanswerable questions. But longtime royal watchers predicted that their initial level of transparency—though relatively high for the monarchy—might not cut it.

"As much as possible, people are trying to respect that there needs to be some privacy there, that this is not just an institution, that this is a real family," royals correspondent Sharon Carpenter told E! News after Buckingham Palace shared Charles' cancer diagnosis. "But people are wondering, what is the prognosis?"

She also predicted that both the king and the Princess of Wales would say more eventually, on their terms.

"There's going to be a certain point in time where Kate does reveal to us why she underwent this surgery and I'm sure we'll have a greater understanding at that point of why she chose to keep it private," Carpenter said. "At some point we'll also find out the type of cancer that King Charles is dealing with."

And as Kensington Palace said March 22, explaining the timing of Kate speaking out, "The Princess wanted to share this information when she and The Prince felt it was right for them as a family."

What's been evident from the start, though, is that something that didn't seem particularly controversial on its face—a mother of three taking a break from work while she recovered from surgery—somehow turned into the most engrossing mystery of the year, aided and abetted by some very suspicious armchair sleuths, the monarchy's history of secrecy and an admitted unforced photo error from the royal family's court.

Here's a guide to every twist the story took before Kate shared her diagnosis:

It all started with the startling announcement that Kate Middleton had undergone planned abdominal surgery at The London Clinic and would remain hospitalized for 10 to 14 days—and away from her official duties until sometime after Easter March 31, according to Kensington Palace.

"The Princess of Wales appreciates the interest this statement will generate," the palace said in the understatement of the year. "She hopes that the public will understand her desire to maintain as much normality for her children as possible; and her wish that her personal medical information remains private." 

Just hours later, Buckingham Palace shared that King Charles III would undergo a corrective procedure for an enlarged prostate at the same hospital the following week, adding to the unprecedented nature of the day for anyone not used to so much information from the royal family.

Both palaces confirmed, respectively, that the king and the Princess of Wales had been discharged from the hospital.

"She is making good progress," Kensington Palace said of Kate in a statement to NBC News. "The Prince and Princess wish to say a huge thank you to the entire team at The London Clinic, especially the dedicated nursing staff, for the care they have provided. The Wales family continues to be grateful for the well wishes they have received from around the world."

Future updates on Kate's progress would only be provided "when there is significant new information to share," the palace added.

A day after Charles and Queen Camilla were photographed going to church, Buckingham Palace announced that the monarch had been diagnosed with cancer, doctors having discovered his condition during the course of treating him for a benign enlarged prostate. The palace told NBC News it was not prostate cancer, but no other details were provided.

The 75-year-old would step back from public-facing duties while he underwent treatment, the palace said, but continue to conduct business behind closed doors.

With both his wife and father out of commission, Prince William returned to his public duties, sharing face-of-the-monarchy responsibility for the foreseeable future with Camilla, his aunt Princess Anne and uncle Prince Edward.

"I'd like to take this opportunity to say thank you also for the kind messages of support for Catherine and for my father, especially in recent days," William said that night at London's Air Ambulance Charity Gala Dinner, his first public comment on his family's health struggles. "It means a great deal to us all."

The former air ambulance pilot quipped, "It's fair to say the past few weeks have had a rather 'medical' focus, so I thought I'd come to an air ambulance function to get away from it all."

William canceled his plans to attend a memorial for his godfather King Constantine II of Greece, who died in January 2023, citing a "personal matter."

Considering the vast array of possibilities that fall under the umbrella of "personal matter," William's schedule shakeup triggered some questions that were never going to be officially answered. At the same time, Kensington Palace offered a brief statement on Kate: "Princess of Wales, who is recovering from abdominal surgery, continues to be doing well."

While Internet chatter is a fairly 24/7 pastime, this is when the concerns started to take a turn from the impatient to the ominous, speculation that Kate had some sort of plastic surgery or was off filming The Masked Singer being among the least morbid or salacious of theories.

As people were busy jumping to conclusions on Leap Day, a spokesperson for Kate told E! News: "Kensington Palace made it clear in January the timelines of the princess' recovery and we'd only be providing significant updates. That guidance stands."

One might have thought Kate being photographed out with her mom, Carole Middleton would quell suspicion.

Instead, Internet sleuths cranked up the zoom on the pics published by TMZ and, at least according to everyone on X (formerly known as Twitter) who made "Pippa" a trending topic, that was younger sister Pippa Middleton in the car with Carole, not Kate.

Back to the drawing board, reality.

William's office offered a terse statement to People regarding the by-then unavoidable speculation that something was more amiss than his wife needing time to recover from surgery: "His focus is on his work and not on social media."

Coincidentally, Kate's maternal uncle Gary Goldsmith—who really was off filming a reality show, Celebrity Big Brother UK—weighed in on royal current events on that night's episode (before being voted out of the house a few days later).

Defending his niece's right to stay silent, he told a housemate, "I spoke to her mum, my sister. She's getting the best care in the world. All the family has done is put the wagons around and look after family first, before anything else."

To mark Mother's Day in the U.K., a photo—credited to William, circa 2024—of Kate with Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis was posted to the Prince and Princess of Wales' Instagram and X accounts, Kate's first appearance on social media since the end of 2023.

"Thank you for your kind wishes and continued support over the last two months," read the rare personalized caption from Kate. "Wishing everyone a Happy Mother's Day. C."

Hours later, the Associated Press, Reuters, Getty Images and Agence France-Presse removed the photo from their databases and issued advisories to clients—known as a "kill notice"—to remove and/or not run the image.

"The Associated Press initially published the photo, which was issued by Kensington Palace," the news wire said in a statement to NBC News. "The AP later retracted the image because at closer inspection, it appears that the source had manipulated the image in a way that did not meet AP's photo standards. The photo shows an inconsistency in the alignment of Princess Charlotte's left hand."

Upon much closer inspection, visible flaws were noticeable, including blurred fingers on Louis' hand and some wonkiness with Charlotte's sleeve.

Reuters reported that its own "picture editors said part of the sleeve of Kate's daughter's cardigan did not line up properly, suggesting that the image had been altered." The London-based agency pointed to the Photoshop usage guidelines in the Reuters Handbook of Journalism, explaining, "We use only a tiny part of its potential capability to format our pictures, crop and size them and balance the tone and color."

Kate swiftly apologized for the kerfuffle.

"Like many amateur photographers, I do occasionally experiment with editing," she posted to X. "I wanted to express my apologies for any confusion the family photograph we shared yesterday caused. I hope everyone celebrating had a very happy Mother's Day. C." 

But if you thought this was only the beginning of a re-examination of other royal snapshots disseminated to photo agencies, wire services and news outlets...you were correct.

Amid this mini-scandal that couldn't have come at a worse time, considering the climate of mounting suspicion, the Daily Mail published photos of William and Kate in the car, the prince reportedly going to drop her off at an appointment on his way to the Commonwealth Day service at Westminster Abbey.

However, in the pictures that ran, while the side of William's face was clearly seen through the side window, Kate was looking in the opposite direction. Meaning, there was still enough wiggle room for doubters to allege that was not her or the shot was taken some other time.

Reading the room, Goff Photos—the agency that obtained the shots of William and Kate—told E! News that the photos were the real deal, noting they "have been cropped and lightened" but "nothing has been doctored."

Jim Bennett, the photographer who snapped the couple, also defended the integrity of the photos, explaining that it's not easy to get great shots through a window.

"Car shots are unpredictable at the best of times," he told People, "and with some reflection on the glass it can be difficult." And, he was only expecting to see the Prince of Wales.

"It wasn't until I checked on the back of the camera to make sure I had a frame of Prince William," he said, "that I realized there was someone sitting next to him. It turned out to be Catherine!"

He also reiterated that they don't use Photoshop to "change" images, other than to adjust the lighting levels.

Other than that one canceled engagement, William was sticking to his official schedule, the 42-year-old future king engaging in light banter remaining the picture of what-we're-used-to normalcy.

Decorating cookies at a youth center in London, he told the group around him, "My wife is the arty one," and "my children are artier than I am."

Also that day, however, Kensington Palace got a scolding from Agence France-Presse in the wake of the family photo debacle.

"At this moment in time, AFP's trust in handout pictures from the [Kensington] Palace has been compromised," AFP global news director Phil Chetwynd said in a statement to E! News. "We cannot say they are a trusted source for handout pictures. We still require further explanations."

Which did not mean that the agency wouldn't accept the palace's photos. Rather, Chetwynd explained, they would "be subject to heightened scrutiny and editing checks." He said he considered it "normal journalistic practice to be skeptical about future interactions."

But Chetwynd added that AFP hoped to "rebuild this trust over time."

William's uncle Earl Charles Spencer, brother of the late Princess Diana, has seen a media frenzy or two in his day and expressed concern about the coverage of Kate and Charles.

As he said on the BBC's Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, "I do worry about what happened to the truth."

Alright, here we go, this is them, there they are: Kate and William—on video posted by TMZ and The Sun two days after the fact—visiting Windsor Farm Shop on March 16.

Or...?

While there was the whiff of the perfectly normal about the sighting—speculation about what was in Kate's shopping bag, a price check ($72) on her Umbro Men England Rugby Icon Hoodie—just as immediately came the skepticism that it was really her. Still others wondered if the video was actually taken on March 16. 

The Sun quoted several people who said they saw William and Kate then and there, including Nelson Silva, identified as the man who shot the video on his iPhone. "This is a video clearly showing her and William," he told the paper. "I saw them with my own eyes. It was a completely relaxed situation."

TMZ posted a screenshot of what it said was the metadata proving the day and time the video was taken on an Apple iPhone 12 Pro. (E! News could not independently verify the timing or provenance of the video. Kensington Palace did not respond to a request for comment.)

But no one has proved it was not them enjoying a day out together on March 16. And really, what better way to at least try to stick a fork in this odd chapter in modern royal history?

"This was a genuine member of the public who happened to see Kate and William at this farm shop," NBC News royal commentator Dana McAndrew said on TODAY. "But was it set up, in that they knew perfectly well that somebody would take a photograph of them? Yes, I think we can assume that was the case."

The Information Commissioner's Office—Britain's data watchdog—confirmed to E! News that it had received a report of a records breach at The London Clinic, where Kate had surgery, and was "assessing the information provided."

Regarding the possibility that someone tried to access the princess' file, hospital chief executive Al Russell told NBC News that "everyone at The London Clinic is acutely aware of our individual, professional, ethical and legal duties with regards to patient confidentiality."

Due to the "recent media coverage," he continued, the hospital has "systems in place to monitor management of patient information and, in the case of any breach, all appropriate investigatory, regulatory and disciplinary steps will be taken. There is no place at our hospital for those who intentionally breach the trust of any of our patients or colleagues."

Kensington Palace told E!, "This is a matter for The London Clinic."

Kate shared in a video message that she was diagnosed with cancer and is "in the early stages" of a preventative course of chemotherapy.

"This of course came as a huge shock," she said, "and William and I have been doing everything we can to process and manage this privately for the sake of our young family. As you can imagine, this has taken time. It has taken me time to recover from major surgery in order to start my treatment. But, most importantly, it has taken us time to explain everything to George, Charlotte and Louis in a way that is appropriate for them, and to reassure them that I am going to be OK."

She was "getting stronger every day," she continued, "by focusing on the things that will help me heal in my mind, body and spirits. Having William by my side is a great source of comfort and reassurance, too, as is the love, support and kindness that has been shown by so many of you. It means so much to us both."

A Kensington Palace spokesperson, explaining the timing of the announcement, stated, "The Princess wanted to share this information when she and The Prince felt it was right for them as a family."

(E! and NBC News are both members of the NBCUniversal family.)

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