I’m calling it: Datchet High Street, 1:50 p.m. March 11. We have officially reached what has to be the absolute nadir of Kategate when a brick wall in an otherwise unremarkable British village has become the subject of furious online scrutiny and downright obsession.
The wall in question is in Datchet in Berkshire and the reason that social media have flipped their lid and gone off the deep end debating the color of bricks in said wall is because on Monday afternoon UK time, Kate, the Princess of Wales, was photographed passing it as she traveled with husband Prince William to London.
(He was off to the Commonwealth Day service at Westminster Abbey; she had a private appointment.)
The princess the world has known for years — perfect, polished, forever beaming and the bearer of adorably chocolate-boxy children — has been replaced by a woman who has just been brutally embarrassed, forced to issue the very first public apology of her royal career, and now finds herself in a place where the royal say-so will now be doubted for years to come.
For Kate, having spent more than a decade painstakingly building an adored public profile, one hospital wing opening and one plucky Scout outing at a time, all of that has, mind-bogglingly, been dashed and lost in less time that it probably takes Prince William to iron his beloved Aston Villa stripe.
It’s not just a question of speed but magnitude, too.
Breaking down Kate Middleton's Photoshop fail
- On Monday, Kensington Palace released a new photo and statement from Kate Middleton for UK Mother’s Day. Eagle-eyed fans immediately saw the photo — showing Kate surrounded by her three children, Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis — was littered with mistakes, either from Photoshop or AI.
- The photo, the original of which Kensington Palace refuses to release, was quickly recalled by photo agencies over fears it had been digitally “manipulated.”
- Middleton issued an apology Monday after her photo went viral for its numerous Photoshop errors. “Like many amateur photographers, I do occasionally experiment with editing,” she said.
- One major telltale sign of manipulation was that a portion of Charlotte’s wrist seems to be missing from under the chopped-off sleeve of her cardigan. Charlotte’s checkered skirt likewise does not line up, with the right edge sticking out at a strange right angle and overlapping with George’s hands.
- Another unusual detail that raised questions about the image’s veracity is Prince Louis’ crossed fingers on his right hand — and a seemingly fuzzy and broken pattern on the right sleeve of his gray sweater.
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- Middleton spotted leaving Windsor Castle with Prince William after post-surgery Photoshop fail
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In fact, even go back to where it all started for the Prince and Princess of Wales, St. Andrews University in 2001, and there has never, ever been a situation such as this where the princess’s actions have called down such a violent tempest on the royal family or debased the wholesale level of trust in them as an institution.
This is all horrible and all new, for us and for the Waleses.
Somehow the couple has managed to violently disturb the royal equilibrium and order of things.
What. The. Hell. Has. Happened?
For years now, royal scripts have been flipped with unnerving regularity, but the perpetrators have tended to be Spare 1 and Spare 2 — Prince Andrew, the Duke of York, and Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex.
But this time, it’s the princess who has found herself stuck on the Buckingham Palace scolding stool.
The question that no one can or will answer is, how have William and Kate gotten this all so dashed wrong?
We’ve had, in drumbeat succession, King Constatinegate (what was really behind William’s withdrawal from his godfather’s memorial service 46 minutes before it began?); Papgate (when a lone snapper managed to get a photo of Kate in a car with her mother, a shot the UK press decided not to publish); Picturegate (the Waleses releasing a new image of Kate and their three children, only for the world’s major picture agencies to issue kill notices); Apologygate (after Kate took the complete blame for “experimenting” with the editing, a mea culpa that answered no real questions and only inflamed the situation); and now, Wallgate.
How many “gates” can William and Kate rack up and still find time to make a 9 a.m. school gate drop-off?
Their attempts to try to corral this situation and get things back under control are going about as well as Prince Andrew placing a personal ad.
Take the wall photo, which the royal savants of Twitter (sorry, X) and TikTok are adamant was faked.
It was, in fact, taken by two well-known freelance photographers, according to the Telegraph, who had set themselves up in that spot to get a shot of William.
“It was about 1:50 p.m. when we saw the convoy coming towards us and we just managed to get a quick picture,” one of the snappers told the paper.
“We had no idea that Kate was even in the car with him until we looked at it. It was pure luck.”
Given that the shots were taken in a time and a place where it could be expected they would be photographed, it’s reasonable to assume these wall photos were taken with the Waleses’ tacit agreement.
They clearly wanted to try to do some sort of crisis management.
Bad luck, Your Royal Highnesses.
I’m not sure how or why they might have thought that one blurry shot of the princess traveling in the back of a Range Rover in this combustible climate would be enough to begin to quench this situation.
The couple and their staff seem at sea here, with no real notion of how to deal with this s–tstorm or get things back under control.
