LONDON — A shopping trip may never have received such scrutiny.
After more than a week of speculation and rumors about the whereabouts and health of Kate, the Princess of Wales, a grainy video emerged appearing to show her out with her husband, Prince William.
That might have been the end of the story in a different era. Not so in the age of internet-fueled conspiracy theories and nosediving trust in public institutions: a time when anything is forgeable and therefore everything, especially anything put out by Britain’s royal family these past few weeks, remains open to questions.
The video, published by the British tabloid The Sun, shows a man in a baseball cap and a jacket, accompanied by a woman with brown hair wearing a hooded sweater and sports leggings. The newspaper said it was recorded at Windsor Farm Shop, near the couple’s home to the west of London, and it splashed the story on its front page alongside the headline, “Great to see you again, Kate!"
Britain’s most-read paper, The Daily Mail, summarized the generally sympathetic tone of the country’s news media, calling it the “image the world has been waiting to see.”
The gossip website TMZ, which also published the video, said it had “delved into the metadata” and had “no doubt” that it was a “legitimate video.”
Kensington Palace did not immediately respond to a request for a response to the video. But it would have known that someone at this very public place would most likely spot them, NBC News royal commentator Daisy McAndrew said Tuesday on “TODAY.”
“This was a genuine member of the public who happened to see Kate and William at this farm shop,” McAndrew said. “But was it setup, in that they knew perfectly well that somebody would take a photograph of them? Yes, I think we can assume that was the case.”
McAndrew said she thought there was a strong chance Kate will make her official return to the public eye on Easter Sunday.
In the meantime, the video has not been enough to convince some of the frenzied masses on social media who have become enthralled by the saga and whose engagement with the royal rumor mill had reached fever pitch just as the video emerged.
Whether the palace or the rest of the public agrees, it is still a topic of intense conversation, with related search terms among the trending topics on multiple platforms.
“That ain’t Kate….,” said TV producer Andy Cohen, who has 2.2 million followers on X.
At the center of all this is a woman who, according to the palace, is recovering from major abdominal surgery and has always been expected to be out of action until at least the end of this month.
“Once we do have answers about what has gone on with the Princess of Wales these past few months, people are going to feel sincerely guilty about their behavior,” Kinsey Schofield, host of the “To Di For Daily” royal podcast, told Britain’s Times Radio on Tuesday.
Polling for Sky News, NBC News’ British partner, suggested that more than half of the population had seen the conspiracy theories but that trust in the royals had not been significantly dented.
At the same time, even many sober royal experts say there have been a slew of decisions by the palace that at best do not help the royal cause with the public, providing fodder for observers seeking to uncover some grand conspiracy.
The picture agency Getty, one of those that pulled Kate’s family photo last week, added an editor’s note Tuesday to another royal image taken by the princess, saying her photo of the late Queen Elizabeth II with her grandchildren and great-grandchildren from 2022 had been “digitally enhanced at source.”
NBC News analysis of the image suggested it had been subjected to Photoshop errors when the editor tried to “clone” one area of the image and copy it onto another.
The photo of Kate and her children may be the biggest controversy over a royal image since 1539, when King Henry VIII sent his court artist, Hans Holbein, to paint Anne of Cleaves so he could consider her for marriage, according to royal biographer and historian Sarah Gristwood.
On meeting Anne, Henry is said to have remarked that the painting was a poor likeness, and their marriage the next year was annulled within months.
While overall levels of trust may not have been dented, it seems for some people the debacle has marked something of an open season for royal rumors.
Many have asked: Why not just end the chatter by releasing a short video explanation or a statement squaring some of the recent issues? The answer is likely to lie in the royals’ stubbornness and their animosity toward the news media, according to expert observers such as Gristwood.
“I can accept that there are reasons why we’re all diving so hastily into this rabbit hole,” said Gristwood, a royal biographer and historian whose books include “The Tudors in Love.” But “we also have to remember Prince William’s determination, like that of his brother, to protect his wife and family and not be bullied by the press.”
Given what we know about William’s views on the media, she said, the royals most likely do not want to be “bullied into doing what they’d never planned to do, forcing Kate to go out in public before she expected to, and being forced to give updates on her health that they always said they wouldn’t do.”
