Kate Middleton's photo editing just made everything worse

• The AP and other photo agencies pulled a photo of Kate Middleton and her children for being edited.
• Kensington Palace posted an apology, seemingly from Kate, admitting to "occasionally experiment with editing."
• This just makes everything so, so much worse. 

I've never endured public speculation that I was secretly working at a low-budget Willy Wonka theme house, but I can relate to one thing Kate Middleton is experiencing.

Any parent or person who has spent time around young kids knows this: It's impossible to ever get a decent photo with more than one kid smiling at the same time. You're lucky if you can even get a take where everyone looks at least halfway normal and no one has eyes closed or is sticking out their tongue.

Which is why the cryptic statement that Kensington Palace put out on X about the photo made everything so much worse.

(Quick recap: Kate Middleton has been out of the public eye since late December, recovering from an unspecified abdominal surgery. In the meantime, conspiracy theories and memes on the internet have started to bubble. Over the weekend, she posted a photo of herself with her three kids, as a sort of proof of life. But the image had clearly been edited, especially in areas around the kids, and the AP and other photo agencies took a rare step in retracting it because, as the AP put it, after "closer inspection, it appears that the source has manipulated the image.")

After the photo's editing was exposed, the weird and cryptic half-apology for "causing confusion" — and implying that Kate is a photography hobbyist (???) — just dug the conspiracy hole deeper.

If she had come out and said something like "I couldn't get all three kids to smile in the same photo — you parents can all relate to this — so I had my team splice together two different takes from the photo shoot," that might have sounded a little better. More honest, at least, and understandable.

It could be slightly worse. In fact, this reminds me of a similar Photoshop fiasco with America's royal family.

In 2022, Kim Kardashian posted an Instagram of her daughter Chicago and niece True (Khloé's daughter) at Disneyland. But fans noticed something was off — the head of True had been cut and pasted onto the body of their other cousin, Stormi.

Kardashian came clean and explained that Kylie Jenner didn't want the photo of Stormi to be posted online, but Kim thought the photo matched her Instagram grid's color aesthetic, so she swapped in True's face to be able to post it.

That is also not particularly relatable to anyone, but neither are most things about the Kardashians' life. But at least Kardashian came clean with an honest explanation.

I don't think that honesty is always the best policy, like if you're talking about someone's new haircut or you just don't want to publicly discuss your medical issues.

But when trying to shut down speculation and conspiracy theories, maybe don't double down.