conuly | If it turns out she's been murdered and eaten I'll probably feel bad for saying this...

but I still don't care about the British Royal Family and their shenanigans, and only harbor a vague resentment that I know enough about them to have any sort of opinion at all.

With that said, I don't know what's up with that photo or what, but making/asking/allowing Kate to apologize for meddling with it was shitty. Even if she was the one who did that poor editing job (for fun? to hide scars? as a plea for help?) they could throw the blame on some unnamed nobody, surely! Somebody safely imaginary who isn't going through a trying time - and whatever's going on must be very trying. It certainly sounds that way.

But whatever, she's probably in rehab or something. I mean, wouldn't you be if you had to deal with all this nonsense all the time? (And couldn't those people afford better photo manipulation? I mean, really! They have enough money!)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

james

That's what the word "intern" is for! Oh, it was an intern, you know how interns are so bad at things.

From:

conuly

Seriously!

From:

profiterole_reads

Eaten, I don't think so, but murdered is starting to sound likely... Or she's run off to the other side of the globe.

From:

conuly

Wouldn't blame her if she did.

From:

frandroid

Yeah but blaming it on "the intern" is kind of shitty it would have been seen that way.

Also apparently she has said that she handles all of her children's photos. To me, her admitting to it is trying to keep it real, which is fine I guess. She's just a mom trying to show a good picture of her children!

But yeah this level of scrutiny is kept for hockey players around here.

From:

conuly

Yeah but blaming it on "the intern" is kind of shitty it would have been seen that way.

Blame it on her husband?

From:

frandroid

You gotta protect the heir to the throne.

From:

conuly

If that's their attitude then I regret to inform her that she does not have an inlaw problem, she has a husband problem.

Edited Date: 2024-03-14 10:11 pm (UTC)

From:

frandroid

Yeah I came to say, after somehow reading more about this since my last post, that if she blamed Willie that could be a lie because he possibly didn't take that/these pictures, on account of being elsewhere...

From:

angelofthenorth

I just assumed she'd had a major ovarian cyst removed, and it was taking longer than expected to heal. The photo thing was trying to get one good pic of all the kids

From:

conuly

Well, as conspiracy theories go, I'm sorry to say that yours isn't very interesting.

And honestly, I will say this much for the conspiracy theorists - if the answer is "this was a planned surgery that had to be bumped up when it became urgent and then led to complications and she's just not capable of being on display right now" then they really ought to have said all that from the start.

I expect these people to understand basic PR 101 - or at least hire people who do.

Edited Date: 2024-03-14 10:34 pm (UTC)

From:

frandroid

They probably hire people who do, and then interfere with their better judgement all the time. :)

From:

gatheringrivers

That would NOT surprise me.

From:

smokingboot

You want interesting? I can't give you that, but I can give you lurid.

Word's been out for a while that Kate's not into 'pegging' which - some hideous gossips say - is William's thing. In fact, Kate's not really into sex much, understandable really. However, the whole Rose Hanbury thing never goes away, and it's been reported that Kate always looks miserable/ haggard/thin. Some are saying that she's bunked off with the kids, the more desperate claim that she's been murdered. Almost no-one takes seriously the claim that she doctored the photos. It's just another PR godsend of the kind that jettisoned the Duke of Pork into the spotlight. Honestly, these people do not know what they are doing.

From:

lilysea

Personally I think it's long past time to do away with the monarchy

I think the monarchy is a massive waste of public resources that could be better spent on eg the NHS/public healthcare

and has not served any useful purpose since the time of Charles I or so...

Having said that, being a woman and a member of the royal family is a special circle of hell - the degree of press scrutiny and harsh criticism on how royal women look/dress/behave expects them to be androids and not humans

From:

cimorene

All of this... my thoughts exactly. Press coverage of them in the uk is so completely unhinged, although perhaps it's just the uk tabloids in general and not really much worse for them than other celebrities. Still, it's a bit revolting to witness. I hope she's benefiting from distance, whatever is happening.

From:

conuly

Press coverage of them in the uk is so completely unhinged

This fact is part of what's fueling the conspiracy theories, as I understand it - the press coverage has been respectful to the point of being entirely nonexistent.

From:

cimorene

Oh no. Sounds like their press office must be a truly terrible job. They really can't win!

From:

conuly

Unless you cut off all their heads and confiscate their property you're unlikely to get very much back from ditching the monarchy.

From:

lilysea

They get

a) significant government funding every year; in addition to

b) significant ***tax exemptions*** on their assets which other very rich people don't get every year

From:

lilysea

They get a "sovereign grant" from the UK government, which is £44.4 million pounds a year ($56,877,321 US Dollars)

From:

conuly

I still think you should consider confiscating all their personal property. It's the only way to be sure.

From:

cimorene

I often think this. I mean, maybe not like, all their clothes and their teddy bears and paperback books, but definitely all the properties and antiquities and jewels and vehicles.

From:

jhetley

Chopping off royal heads didn't work the last time.

From:

conuly

I'm going to spend the next month digging up ragweed, getting every bit of root I can find. They spread by runners, so patches don't stay clear unless you do it again and again and again. But with time and patience I will be successful.

From:

ysabetwordsmith

I key reason I have little interest in other people is because I enjoy talking about things like quantum physics, the detritus food web, or why we should be exploring all the icemoons ... and they want to talk about famous people or strangers having sex or the latest pop song.

From:

conuly

Admittedly, some pop songs are quite catchy.

From:

sabotabby

Oh, rehab makes a lot of sense. I just find it skeevy how every major news outlet was like, "oh, of course, it was just Kate messing around in Photoshop," like any of those people ever touch a computer.

From:

conuly

I mean, maybe they do? Probably? You gotta have a hobby, after all...? (I just hope they put it to better use than following their gossip. That'll drive them all even crazier.)

From:

cimorene

Yeah, she's like forty, and she grew up middle class and went to college, so I'm sure she has, at least in the past, used computers some. And it's even plausible that she is personally in charge of photos of the kids, but that doesn't mean she was the one photoshopping. I'm sure she has a personal assistant, regardless of what else she's up to.

From:

movingfinger

Phones and tablets nowadays have photo-editing software, so the edits could have been done that way---but not the "merge photos" functions, which tend to return better results. The discontinuities are consistent with working on a small screen.

I must say I fully expected to hear that Kate's head had been photoshopped onto a stand-in body (perhaps her husband's mistress), and nothing about the edits revealed thus far disproves it, although I expect the best pixel-peepers in the world are going over it to check for that.

From:

cimorene

I thought that at first, but apparently the hand around the girl's waist was photoshopped in. Unless it was just someone who didn't dare hug.

From:

elisi

Rehab sounds very plausible. Esp because it's the kind of thing they would NOT be able to admit to. The future Queen can't be misusing drugs...

From:

cimorene

Yeah, sadly plausible. Hope it's not eating disorders! Isn't it bizarre to be like "abdominal surgery is the best possibility, I guess"?

From:

conuly

Yeah. Nobody with any sense acts like they have something to hide if they have really have nothing to hide - and this would answer all the questions without being too lurid or outre to be fully believable.

From:

andrewducker

This is my favourite current rumour: https://twitter.com/sonyairyna/status/1768045417130782867

From:

malada

What a tempest in a tea cup. It's a photo of a woman and her kids. If it were anyone else people would shrug and say, "Nice photo," and not go searching through every pixel looking for the Loch Ness monster. Get a grip people.

From:

frandroid

For your consideration:
https://twitter.com/kaekaecurtis/status/1768398973633491246?t=ipcOWKZyrR-5tdae_R17mQ&s=19

From:

pwcorgigirl

I assumed the poor woman, who is thin as a rail and looks tired all the time, had come down with something like Crohn's disease and the "planned abdominal surgery that isn't cancer" involved something to do with her intestines. The Royal Family is not going to candidly discuss poo, even though they seem to land in it quite often.

Once can only imagine how fed up the British public must be with that pack of clowns.