What’s wrong with this picture?

Whenever a magazine or a newspaper runs a test asking the question in the title, I take it. Yes, I know I have an appalling eye for physical detail, and yet I can’t help resisting the challenge. So predictably I fail.

As I did this time, looking at the Mothering Sunday photo of a radiant Princess of Wales and her three children. The photo was released by the Palace to quash spreading rumours about Kate’s health. Alas, that noble effort had the opposite effect.

For some people are more observant than I and they know a Photoshopped image when they see it. Those eagle-eyed pedants counted 16 things wrong with the picture, from the autumn leaves in the background of the photograph supposedly taken this weekend to the fewer than the regulated number of fingers on Louis’s hand.

(Spoiler alert: there will be no other spoilers from me. Try to find the other 14 errors, see how you get on. Unprompted, I would have spotted none.)

As a result, AP, AFP, Reuters and Getty Images, which at first ran the picture, have now withdrawn it. One statement said: “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.”

And the British media refused to publish the photograph, except to illustrate stories similar to this one. Considering their unbounded love for paparazzo offerings, they must be complimented for their reticence.

This is a very serious business indeed, and not just because the Palace seems unable to employ competent retouchers. Nor is there anything wrong with publishing an official picture that has been either touched up or taken when the model was younger.

Why, I am myself guilty of such legerdemain: the photo adorning my books and blogs was taken a few years and many illnesses ago, making it rather flattering to my current appearance. I use it not out of vanity, but because it’s the only professional high-res photo of myself in my album.

But that doesn’t matter: no one really cares about my looks and health, family and friends excepted. Our future queen is a different story, and her health has far-reaching ramifications.

Back in January Kate had abdominal surgery from which she is still recovering. That gave rise to fears about her long-term health, which this clumsy photo was supposed to allay. Such fears go beyond the public’s voracious appetite for royal gossip.

For Kate is indeed our future queen, which makes her health a constitutional issue. And when the Palace releases dubious health bulletins or fake photographs, the issue becomes the proverbial hot potato.

The first bulletin in January said the princess had checked into the London Clinic for an abdominal operation. Words like ‘minor’ or ‘routine’ didn’t come up, but they were implicit.

The only specific information provided was that the operation had nothing to do with any kind of cancer. And oh well, lest we forget, went the afterthought, Kate would stay in hospital for a fortnight and then convalesce for two to three months. Nothing to worry about.

Those PR chaps take us for idiots, I thought. Anyone who has a modicum of medical knowledge would know that something untoward is going on.

My own empirical knowledge of medicine has been acquired on its receiving end, as a veteran of many illnesses, some of them deadly, and nine operations, some of them abdominal. And some of those were performed at the same London Clinic (thank God for private insurance), where my wife has also had two operations.

Neither Penelope nor I have ever spent more than three post-op days in hospital, which I’d say is par for the course. Hence, loath as I am to play cracker-barrel physician, weeks in hospital and months of convalescence betoken a serious condition.

The most widespread abdominal surgeries involve removal of the appendix, gall bladder, malignant or benign tumours, liver transplants or else hernia repair. My appendix and much-abused liver are still in place and I’ve never had a hernia, but I’ve had the pleasure of experiencing the other kinds, and none involved anything even remotely like Kate’s stay in hospital and subsequent convalescence.

All this sounds solipsistic, but I’m not bragging about my illnesses – there’s nothing to brag about. All I’m saying is that my experience suggests that Kate’s condition is far from trivial. The attendant events reinforce this impression.

First, Prince William cancelled at the last minute his attendance of the memorial service for his godfather, King Constantine of Greece. That was especially odd since William’s father, King Charles III, was also unable to attend because he is recovering from cancer treatment. Kensington Palace cited “personal reasons”, which sounded ominous in context.

Then the Department of Defence announced that the princess would attend Trooping of the Colour in June, only for that announcement to be hastily withdrawn. One possible inference is that the Department jumped the gun, and Kate isn’t expected to be fit enough to attend public events even six months after her operation.

Most Britons, emphatically including me, feel a great deal of affection for the Princess of Wales. Unlike her late mother-in-law, she has gone about her royal duties with dignity, responsibility and grace. That’s why we are genuinely concerned about Kate’s health.

But – and this is something Kate seems to realise, whereas her late mother-in-law didn’t – royal personages, especially those likely to accede, are defined not so much by their personalities as by their functions. And the functions they perform are vital to the constitution of the realm.

This doesn’t mean that every detail, salacious or otherwise, of the royals’ lives should be exposed to the gawking, gasping public. But it does mean that their subjects should be informed of issues with constitutional implications.

Since Kate is the wife of the future King William V, her physical wellbeing is definitely of constitutional import. So, much as I hate the phrase “we have a right to know”, in this case we do. Meanwhile, I – and millions of people in Britain and around the world – wish Kate the speediest recovery. We need her.

P.S. Just so that we are clear. The same event has three different names, and which one you choose says something about you. Mothering Sunday is conservative/Christian. Mother’s Day is woke/secular. International Women’s Day is woke/communist. Thus, the photo under discussion is supposed to have been taken on Mothering Sunday.