My perspective on "kategate" is rooted in personal & professional (American) experiences. Perhaps this post will help someone.
My Charles- Catherine theory:
Charles' Cancer diagnosis was not entirely unexpected
BRF is hoping for the best AND preparing for the worst
In My imagination: Before the Coronation, Wills & Kate revisited their checklist of major things to do before Wills becomes king: Kate's surgery was on that list. Charles feeling "unwell" sped up the timing of what may have been Catherine's "future" surgery.
A planned (disruptive) medical event scheduled to fit the best time in the life of a princess who is the future queen consort & mother of his heir.
What the world knew:
BRF Major Health Updates
PROSTATE Procedure -king
Benign ABDOMINAL surgery -wife of king's heir (princess)
Results
Undisclosed location of malignancy-king
Successful surgery. Medical leave of absence (at minimum) through Easter-princess
Protocols
Weekly (undisclosed) "treatments" & crowd control -king
Discharged home to Windsor to continue recovery-princess
Prognosis
Caught early (intentional slip via Rishi)-KC
Making good progress-Princess
Princess well enough to travel to her Amner home w/husband & kids for school break
What the Media Heard
What the Media Did...
Tumblr to the Media: stop feeding the sewer squad!
I've personally experienced a medical talk: "at some point in your life, you should PLAN x (a very disruptive) operation"
"We advise you to make PLANS to undergo x surgery, preferably before the age of your mother's x. Pick the best time for your busy schedule and lifestyle as it will be a major disruption. It's prophylactic so there's no rush and of course this is a recommendation, but studies show that it will prevent you from developing x or at minimum, significantly decrease the probability of you ever developing x, a life threatening malignancy. Sorry, we cannot tell you when, but just PLAN to do it when it fits your (busy) lifestyle & schedule."
Me during "the talk"
Me listening to 2nd 3rd 4th opinions
Sometimes our PLANS get interrupted
"In the end, everything will be okay. If it's not okay, it's not the end."
How did the British media vultures ignore "Keep Calm and Carry On"
Many members of this family have been treated for malignancies and other life threatening illnesses and yet they have remained tight lipped.
Perhaps King Charles had a recurrence or even developed a malignancy secondary to previous adjuvant treatments. No one needs to know the location of his tumor.
Perhaps Catherine's procedure was not prophylactic. She could have been uncomfortable for a very long time. No one needs to know Catherine's diagnosis.
I do want them to be well & become humble servants of Christ Jesus, like Queen Elizabeth.
Open to hearing corrections & thoughts.
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As someone who works in PR I am ASTONISHED at how bad Kensington Palace is at all of this. It’s the most interesting part of the whole thing for me. Well that, and how much it seemingly vindicates H&M and Harry in particular in what he’s said about the firm and the media’s role in protecting the Heir at all costs.
Yeah I work in PR for a public company and anytime we want to put something out we have to run it up the chain - we need legal and Investor relations and executive approvals.
Even if KP and BP had their individual PR teams, which makes sense, there should still be one main central PR office that everyone answers to that manages the entire royal families PR, makes sure schedules and press opportunities and STRATEGY AND MESSAGING all aligns, before running up the chain for final approvals. There’d be a social team and a crisis team and government relations team and a branding team and a general “talent rep” kind of team, all working in tandem to serve the overall strategy for the royal family.
The fact that there are so many cooks in so many different kitchens is why the royal family has had so many PR disasters honestly for decades now. They’re truly doing it all wrong. So many Worst Practices here, not Best Practices.
It really doesn't seem like there is an overall PR team. Just the separate entities
Yeah and that’s the problem IMO. They are a business that should be run like a business. They should have the individual departments I suggested, and even more, working in tandem.
The fact that there are so many separate entities with different agendas and priorities is a huge part of their problem IMO.
But Charles has been transparent for the most part!! And photographed repeatedly. It’s so bizarre when compared to KP, and feels passive aggressive to me to be honest lolol.
They’re really so so so bad at this 😭😭😭😭 but the British public and the media lets them get away with it 🙃🙃🙃
For heaven’s sake. If she’s recovering nicely, why resort to recycling old photos?
Other sources are making a pretty good case for the fact that it’s a November photo, taken after Catherine and the children visited the baby bank.
Does nobody, and I mean nobody, know how to do PR in that place anymore? Now it's pin all of this on just-recovering-from-abdominal-surgery Kate? Why not on William since they were so proud about how he was the one that took the photo? Somehow they keep making everything ten times worse.
I’m sorry, but I don’t believe for a second that Kate personally edited that photo together in such a way that it had to be killed as inauthentic. The pulling of the photo is likely more about the refusal to provide metadata or the raw image for proof rather than silly Photoshop choices. That isn’t an issue of “mummy going wild on the computer,” it’s a larger organizational issue about trust, transparency, and KP’s overall poor approach to news orgs and the press lately.
Why is Kate taking the fall? Why is William such a lout to let an ill Kate put this on her own shoulders rather than admit KP made an error or say KP is going to reevaluate their practices and make a change?
Are college interns running Palace p.r.? Because I cannot understand how they're botching this so badly. If Kate couldn't/wouldn't pose for a legit photo, then just don't release anything. The Royals are basically dumping tankers of gas on the inferno by playing all these games.
Sorry, am I going insane? After saying they wouldn’t respond to these conspiracy theories, they
a) responded by putting out a doctored image,
b) responded to the backlash of doctored image by claiming the woman recovering from a medical issue was playing around in Photoshop, and
c) responded to the backlash of editing claims by putting out an image where the person in the photo is supposed to be Kate but could LITERALLY BE ANYBODY.
NONE OF YOU ARE FINDING THIS WEIRD? NONE?!
"Kate's Back"
Well, it is indeed a picture of Kate's back
Apparently the main symptom of her mysterious medical condition is that any photo with her in it immediately becomes grainy, blurry, or with people's wrists trying to escape into a fifth dimension.
Good Lord, I haven't followed a disaster story this closely since Oceangate Titan and this one may be even worse. The narrative is out of control and the rules have gone out the window.
They already lost control of the narrative at this point. No matter what they do now, they will be scrutinized more than they've ever been before. And they seem grossly unprepared for it.
She’s not even facing camera, how is this supposed to help? This just feeds the conspiracy theorists! headdesk
It's becoming a PR nightmare that only Olivia Pope can rescue.
Maybe the better question is that people are concerned about Kate's welfare, and most WERE okay with waiting under the timeline KP initially offered that is she will likely return by or after Easter.
However KP has mismanaged the messaging, and with that concern grows over how weird some of the updates are. The article explains why this medical time out is turning into an absolute PR crisis. It isn't so much about Kates right to medical privacy (she definitely deserves that )
It now is about institutional reliability, the heir William's arguably erratic or unusual behavior or his courtiers' comments, the mess with the all kill photoshopped/Frankensteined photo (which has never happened before with a palace released photo), the very different approaches from BP vs KP, etc etc. It's become bigger than Kate sad to say.
And ultimately now people are worried for her, in a way they wouldn't have been, because things have become so irregular and bungled. So the urgency to make sure she is safe and okay has become louder and more insistent.
“CNN is now reviewing all handout photos previously provided by Kensington Palace.”
“In editorial photography, photojournalists and editors commonly adjust a photograph’s exposure or color balance in order to more accurately reflect the scene. Most news organizations, including CNN, regard it as unacceptable to move, change or manipulate the pixels of an image. To do so would alter the reality of the situation the image is intended to document.”
“In the past, the family’s amateur photographs have been well received when posted on social media. But on this occasion, this photo was also released to media organizations as a handout and the palace wasn’t transparent about the fact it had been adjusted.
That will have damaged the trust between the palace and media organizations – many of which, like CNN, will likely be assessing all royal handouts. The editing storm has undermined the existing relationship and when public interest over any possible cover up escalates, as it has done recently, many news outlets will now have take that speculation more seriously.”
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The Princess delivered such a clear & well written statement for the layperson. She displayed unparalleled poise, courage, and compassion under the harshness of the global spotlight.
I feel for her. Unlike Charles (IMO), Catherine never anticipated that she might have been battling cancer symptoms. Hearing the pathology results was devastating. They deserve our compassion.
And yet THIS:
Knowledge is Power
I already created a post to help the layperson better understand "preventative chemotherapy."
The use of preventative chemotherapy means Catherine's lymphatic system is concerning and warranted aggressive action to ensure that she is cured of this disease.
Sometimes a malignant tumor is removed and the body is cancer free [Sarah York/Guiliani Rancic].
Thankfully Catherine's magins are cancer free as there is no evidence the cancer metastasized.
Despite those cancer free margins, the cancer gained access to the lymph channels (not her lymph nodes), hence she was prescribed a course of a "preventative" form of poison (chemotherapy) to arrest & annihilate the wandering cancer cells in every system of her body. 😥
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