I do not remember the Windsors celebrating International Women’s Day so vocally and so online before this year. IWD was on Saturday, March 8th. Both Kensington Palace and Buckingham Palace made social media posts about the day. KP, which is Prince William and Kate’s office, highlighted the “brilliant women who have inspired us over the last 12 month” and there was a thread of female humanitarians, environmentalists, Holocaust survivors, homelessness experts, a young Welsh speaker and the late Liz Hatton. It was a lovely thread which actually did an okay job of highlighting KP’s efforts online to at least do the bare minimum in spotlighting this work. But Buckingham Palace’s IWD thread is the one getting much more attention. BP decided to showcase “the Royal Family’s longstanding support for female photographers which stretches back as far as the advent of photography in the mid-1800s.” They did a thread of photos of female royals, photos taken by female photographers.
Today, on #InternationalWomensDay, we are showcasing the Royal Family’s longstanding support for female photographers which stretches back as far as the advent of photography in the mid-1800s.
From Frances Sally Day’s photographs of Queen Victoria in the 1850s, to Dorothy… pic.twitter.com/Y6OKJzzRBy
— The Royal Family (@RoyalFamily) March 8, 2025
They included portraits taken of Queen Camilla, Queen Victoria, Princess Anne, Queen Alexandra and the Duchess of Edinburgh. Um, notice anyone missing? LMAO. The Princess of Wales – Kate, I mean – was not featured as a subject OR a keen amateur photographer. Kate rarely poses formally for portraiture, and when she does, it’s always for a male photographer, I guess? And I also assume they didn’t want to highlight Kate’s “photography” given all of the kill notices and questions about how often Kate edits the crap out of her photos. Just for fun, I’m adding some Kensington Palace handout photos, allegedly taken by Kate. I’m also adding a couple of portraits taken by Paolo Roversi for Kate’s 40th in 2022, and… yeah, the Mother’s Day photo from last year. Why not.
Photos courtesy of Kensington Palace, cover courtesy of The Sun.
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- Peter Phillips and his wife Autumn Phillips arrive for Gold Cup day, The Festival at Cheltenham Racecourse 2019, Cheltenham Glos,Image: 535596650, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: WORLD RIGHTS – Fee Payable Upon Reproduction – For queries contact Avalon.red – sales@avalon.red London: +44 (0) 20 7421 6000 Los Angeles: +1 (310) 822 0419 Berlin: +49 (0) 30 76 212 251 Madrid: +34 91 533 4289, Model Release: no, Credit line: Jules Annan / Avalon
Loved Meghan’s IWD post. The Buck Palace post in comparison is forgettable except for the fact they posted a photo of the young QE2 who looked so regal and beautiful and a cause for optimism in post-WW2 Britain. As typical, Chuck is using his dead mother for PR purposes again.
In contrast, the current Queen, Camilla the bitch from hell, is destroying the monarchy from within by hiring her tabloid mates, while lazy Katie continues to disappoint.
The monarchy tracks the mood of the nation and Britain – especially after Brexit – is in the doldrums. Not much cause for optimism.
Blogger that’s it exactly! A young, attractive queen, post war, having babies, creating a sense of optimism. Limited media. Very controlled. It was fantastic pr. She didn’t even need to do much, everyone said she did a lot and it was believed. The world is different.
Chuck let them in and their world has never been the same since because he was pathologically jealous of Diana and Camilla was terrified.
They were warned about it and the monarchy today is ugly, ugly, ugly.
“Its mystery is its life. We must not let in daylight upon magic.” – Walter Bagehot during Queen Vic’s reign.
I agree, I’m Diana generation. I saw it all first hand also as a member of a commonwealth country. I saw it play out. I loved Diana.
But the rf mystery could only be retained with limited or no media.. Hence the rota.. They simply forgot about the internet. Propaganda only goes so far – even though they buy thousands of bots. They do buy millions of bots but it’s still shovelling sg^r up a hill
Philip let them in first with insisting the Coronation be shown on television, when courtiers were against it. He followed up with pushing The Royal Family documentary, which upset a lot of people. They didn’t want to know the Queen used tupperware for her cereal storage. They kept the sunlight *out* for a long time after that.
The only thing I can say is every time I see the fake wails pic, it makes me feel pain. The way they faked the poses is ugh. So damn uncomfortable.. With 40 million pounds, surely they could have employed better photoshop. It’s skin crawl absurdly painful
It really feels worse making the kids the part of this lie. It will always be gossiped about how much of it was faked.
Of course but the physicality? Wth? The kids will always be gossiped about, but they’ll never be in the firing line for these messes
Kate releasing their drawings was an incredible intrusion into their lives which opened them up for mockery. Bad enough W&K use stories, photos, and videos of them in their calamity PR. Invading their personal lives and space with the release of those drawings is even worse IMO.
Loool this is so shady. Has me playing “are WanK separated or do C&C just hate her” for not the first time this year lol
Cool idea for an IWD post from BP though, I thought.
I’m trying to remember. Wasn’t there some article from People or the DB where the Wales were saying stuff through anonymous sources. And we were all saying oh snap, Camilla and Charles aren’t going to like that. But I can’t even remember what it was? I may have to go to the archives.
They were telling Charles to give up the crown to Will, since he is young and ready and other European countries are doing that. Then, the #KateGate happened 😂😂 Charles and Camilla are probably laughing their asses off at the audacity.
William hasn’t stopped doing that, sevenblue. There are plenty of recent stories about William cozying up to orangina and showing he’s a ‘global statesman ready for kingship now’.
Some of it relates to KP not referencing Charles during World Cancer Day.
But yeah Camilla is totally behind this.
I’m guessing Charles has already filled Camilla’s coffers and she can afford to be a total bit@h without having to worry about William giving her the boot when the time comes.
“Kate rarely poses formally for portraiture, and when she does, it’s always for a male photographer, I guess?”
We all know how FewchaKween behaves around women, plus the fact that she doesn’t seem to have any female friends other than Emma Sayles. So I’m not surprised she can’t/won’t work with women.
How many times has she actually posed for portraiture besides that 40th birthday one? I really don’t know. Has she ever had a female photographer? I feel like she must’ve?
There was a real photographer who took actual portrait photos. Kates amateur photograph was also shown
The silly Kate the Country Maven thing for Vogue was a male photographer. She did run around stealing Annie L’s sets and lighting to grab a bunch of ‘family photos’ during the QEII photo session.
That is weird right? Kate took the photo of Camilla for a magazine cover. You would think, they would use that one at least? It would show the relationship between the current QC and the future one. Charles isn’t happy with Kate, so he can’t even fake it, I guess.
The hate from insecure Kate and her mother started the ball rolling. I reckon Camilla would have been happy having the Sussex around, more so she could leak their activities to her tabloid mates.
But nooo, Katie’s green monster reared its ugly head and triggered everyone else’s petty jealousies and so the monarchy is stale, pale and in disarray as a result.
Yeah, I don’t think C&C were ever close to Kate. I know they tried to sell the narrative that Charles and Kate got super close during their health journey but it’s clear they didn’t. Charles didn’t go to her Christmas concert, he also didn’t pay her any attention at an event they both were at last year. It’s clear they don’t liked her and find her irrelevant.
Kate is smoke and mirrors. I think the spin she is allegedly a photographer was spin to try to refute that Kate really did something during the years waiting.for the ring. She really did not.
There was the story that Kate during the wait y days was going to take lessons from testin o and Testino had to deny the story
A professional photographer took the portrait photographs. Of Camilla. Kates was shown too
I don’t know about that. It was the official statement that Kate took the photo of Camilla, that was on a magazine cover. She was posing in a garden if I remember correctly.
This is all so ridiculously petty it’s hilarious.. the fact that this is actually being done by an elderly man who has one foot in the grave is a little surreal.. I guess Chuck plans to die petty and childish. As for Kate she should have made the list just for the Kill Notification those are rare.
@Sevenblue. ….er…..what @Tessa said is true. It wasnt a photo of cowmilla by kitty (if indeed there were any such photos) that made it into that magazine.
I didn’t know there were folks who uncritically believed that “an official statement from KP” means, ipso facto, that it bears any relationship to truth.
For 1K yrs those folks hv maintained the status quo with their subjects by making just enough koolaid for them to consume so they can continue to suspend disbelief.
As H said in Spare: “Everything around here is stagecraft.” And, I would add: smokes, mirrors and bread-n-circuses.
@Kingston, honestly I don’t care if it is true or not, but the credit was already given to Kate for the photo by BP. So, why not include it? They didn’t have to show Kate, it is a photo of Camilla. It would be a good PR for BP. So, it is especially weird they didn’t include that.
@Sevenblue I agree. Whether or not they are telling the truth about Kate actually taking these photos, (which I think most people are skeptical of) it does not matter because their party line has been she is the one taking these photographs. She is the one that took the photo of Camilla, according to them just like they said she is the one that took the mother’s Day photo they got the kill notice.
It’s bizarre not to include her, whether the actual truth is that she is any sort of decent photographer or not. It’s that they would highlight all of these Royal women and women photographers and not include photos by her or with her. When they had absolutely no problem crowing about it in the press before. We realize it’s spin and lies, it’s that they aren’t even bothering with maintaining that fiction any longer that raises eyebrows.
I think we need to include Camilla on the pettiness here. She was photographed by Kate and it’s not like she was unaware of this.
Kate is nothing special as a photographer. I always believed it was in fact Kate that took that picture of Camilla for the cover of that magazine (was it Country Life?) because it exhibited one of her signature problems – poor depth of field control. If it’s true that picture was in fact taken by a more accomplished photographer – well, I’d want to remain anonymous if it were me.
Can’t comment if Kate should be highlighted with the other women as I haven’t seen who’s included in BP’s commemoration.
A professional photographer took a photo of kate snapping a photo of Camilla. I recall this. Camilla would have wanted s professional photographer not Kate. This was just happy families spin
Yes! I imagine the published photo of Camilla was actually a professional photo.
Also why no photos of Kate taken by that Millie person they use so often? Would have been go to add that to the deck.
It’s not that there aren’t a lot photos of the late princess of Wales by woman photographer too, Jayne Fincher for example. I mean the princess that had a real impact worldwide. But never would petty BP engage in positive PR.
They continue to erase Diana. But she lives in spirit with the Sussexes.
Oh dear no Can’t? They probably didn’t want to chance getting hateful comments about the frankenphoto from last year that was attributed to Can’t although those comments would be well deserved. Guess Can’t and the Middletons glory days might just be coming to an end?
Let’s hope so.
Everyone I know, work or social, can’t stand the Middletons.
How will they top last year’s Mother’s Day disaster? Anybody suspect they will release a sun light drenched video of Kate and kids cooking in the kitchen ending with Louis licking the spoon??
It could be a photo of the wails at dinner passing platters of food that Kate baked and wide eyed kids looking at cake they helped cook. Kate dressed in white with an apron. Being given pda by William
According to BBC website under-performing civil servants could be incentivised to leave their jobs while senior staff will have their pay linked to their performance, as part of government plans expected to be unveiled this week.
I would LOVE to see RF treated the same way as in just paid per engagement and they have to complete a daily timesheet, have quarterly appraisals, targets and undertake regular training. They would all faint with horror and Kate would definitely run home to mama!
@Lady Dugby……..all that paperwork in support of what productivity? Rmbr, the “engagements” and charity visits and every other piblic-facing activity carried out by the lazy, do-nothing windsors are just staged photo op events. Literally.
So all the paperwork you mentioned wd merely add to the cost of keeping them.
Pay linked to performance is definitely overdue for the Royal Family.
‘According to BBC website under-performing civil servants could be incentivised to leave their jobs….’ They got Elno Muskrat working for them? Willing to bet, outside of KP’s civil servants, this ‘under-performing’ BS is just that, BS.
I didn’t hear about the KP post but it sounds good. The Royal Family post was just weird to me. I know they were featuring female photographers but it still just ended up focusing on the Royal Family itself and inadvertently leaving out Kate. Didn’t Kate work with Millie Pinkington?
I think it was more that Kate regularly took credit for Millie Pinkington’s work and the latter kept quiet about it?
^This. Kate didn’t do anything for PP. All the photos were credited to Millie P. In exchange for keeping her quiet once the engagement happened? The Midds paid her to do the behind the scenes wedding photos (to help launch her business) and instructed her to do a ‘they’re so in love’ piece for the public.
I am with you @Amy Bee, why am I looking at women that either were born into a position or married in to celebrate IWD? I mean the rest of us had to deal in world that does everything to stop our success. I know it was supposed to be about the women photographers but surely they have portfolio’s that go beyond royal portraits.
Even if you accept it’s about the photographers, it’s still this is how women have impacted us (RF), not the world, not the country or the community. For all I know one of those women have an award winning photograph of wildlife, disasters, the urban condition, etc. My first look caused me to gasp – it’s not always about you!!
I would say that it’s not BPs job to promote Kate, that dubious task falls to KP and if they choose not to, oh well.
What is brilliant about the petty exclusion is that BP gave themselves just enough to provide explanations to exclude Kate. One of them being there are no solo photos of Kate taken by a female photographer.
Wasn’t Kate the one who supposedly took the photos of Camilla gardening for a posh magazine ? I think it was last year. If they didn’t include this one, big LOL.
That would make more sense if they didn’t feel like giving free PR to Kate. It made both Camilla and Kate look good to royalists, like these women get along kind of way. Charles really said, no Kate.
Didn’t Kate have a portrait taken by Ebenezer? Also it seems to me there was a big deal made a while back of Kate “supporting” female photographers and the photographer was at least part African heritage? It’s so petty to leave her out. There is no hope for the Windsors because they cannot overcome their pettiness and personal vendettas which they play out on the national stage.
Kitty is a beneficiary and a practitioner of the pettiness so…….no soup for her.
NO, that’s not petty! Kate deserves it for the whole thing. Diana’s not there either, and she should be there, for the whole thing. Maybe we don’t know something, maybe they don’t show divorcees:))
@tamsin: you’re thinking of the painted portrait of Kate by British-Zambian artist Hannah Uzor.
@AR: Anne’s a divorcee, so that can’t be their excuse.
@BeanieBean
Well yes, but Anna is royal, that doesn’t count:)) because after the divorce she is still royal, and Kate after the divorce is a nobody, she goes back to her family of frauds. Even Diana was erased, even though she was an aristocrat and the most amazing and beloved royal.
We have two elderly people with money and time enough to do anything they choose to benefit mankind and leave a generous legacy and help others…but we’re being gossipy little bitches to our family.
Got it.
This is your legacy Chuck, being a jealous, petty, little man. I won’t be around to see it, but history will pinpoint when CK invited the press into the palace to rehabilitate the Side Piece—and himself—to the public as the beginning of the end.
I have no problem with C&C being petty against W&K. Bring on more and more of it. The faster this monarchy ends the better.
I did get a good snort out of this yesterday, thanks Cams!
Four queens, the Princess Royal, the Duchess of Edinburgh, but not the current Princess of Wales??? Now THAT is the proverbial slap in the face they’re so fond of writing about.
I love that this highlights the lack of support Kate gives to other women.
Kate was left out of BP’s IWD tribute? She’s one heartbeat from becoming queen consort…or she won’t be queen consort.
What kind of choice is this? Why BP did a thread of photos of female royals, photos taken by female photographers to highlight IWD? Why ignore any other category? I found it really shady because they chose specifically the category of photography (in which, allegedly, Kate excells at) completely ignoring her photos of Camilla or even those of the late Queen with the grandchildren…and they ignored any photos of Kate taken by women (I’m sure there are some as other cb mentioned). I think that this is coming from Camilla.
Because the Royals know that Kate didn’t take any photos of Kamila, she just posed with the camera, which she held with such “skill” as a frying pan, and the lens missed the model ;))) There are no photos of Elizabeth with her grandchildren, at least not in such a set as those promoted by Middleton as her own, because they are all clumsy photomontages. There are no photos of Filip with Luis – the boy is glued on, etc. Let me remind you that when the American press agency announced that it would now check all the photos sent to them by BRK, which it compared to North Korea and Iraq, William quickly announced that from now on he would not send photos to the agency, but would only upload them to his Instagram. This is nothing new to me, because I know about this and I have seen for a long time that they do not actually have any photos, because they are all photomontages. In the photo on the path between the trees, where from the right are William, George, Charlotte, Louis, Kate in leggings and a white blouse, Kate and Louis are glued, the film on the bench about “cancer” is clumsily edited in AI on a painted background, Kate leaning against a tree – photomontage, similarly photos on bikes, jumping on the dunes … and many others.
Sometimes they are even glued together from small parts, they have glued together heads, often William has a head that is too small, on a Christmas tree, or on sand dunes… I think 90% of the photos of Middleton and KP that have reached the press are photomontages. Kate is such a photographer, as she is a virtuoso. It is all propaganda and pretense. It also shows how much Kate is separated from the royal family. It seems that she does not have access to them privately, so she glues together photos that she does not have.
Very interesting @AR.
What is your opinion on the christening photo of Archie? Kate looks enormous, with a massive head in that photo, and I’m no expert at all, but as soon as it was published, it looked totally out of proportion to me. Was that a photo where William and Kate were glued on afterwards, to make them look like they were there, when they weren’t?
Kate is no professional photographer. Snowdon was a professional photographer before his marriage to Margaret. Kate had no training too lazy.
Exactly..
You don’t have to be a professional to take decent photos, just a little talent and some time to learn and practice. The problem with Kate is blunt and lazy. She and William are the same. Kate wants to be like Meghan, and Will envies Harry everything: that he is a pilot, that he was in the war, that he is athletic, that he created Invictus…, William also wants to, but he never did it, he only appears a few times in rescue operations and runs away, he is a loser, he walks with a surfboard on the beach, pretends to swim, except that when the film with Harry on the board showed, it was Kensington Palace that posted a photo of the guy as William :)), and the press in the service of the Palace writes about Kate as a master of photography, a virtuoso…, calls William a war hero because he went to Poland and was close to the border with Ukraine, an Apache pilot because he sat in it for a few minutes, etc… The agency rightly called them North Korea, the propaganda is the same. I don’t know if I have met such losers. Kate may be thrown out, but William is to become king… Unless the prophecy of the modern Nostradamus comes true that he will never become king:))
They could have used one of the pictures of Diana taken by Jayne Fincher, a photographer who worked a lot with her. But no.
I have no issue going after Kate for Frankenphotos. However, ALL of the British royals have used excessive editing and been part of seemingly cobbled-together images, and this includes Camzilla. I’m inclined to see Kate not being included, because this family is dysfunctional, nasty and cruel.
https://people.com/royals/kate-middleton-photographs-camilla-duchess-of-cornwall-country-life-magazine/
Kate and Camilla both can’t stand Meghan. Kate is still a mean girl.
Meghan is so lucky she got out of there! Kate is definitely mean. Camzilla (see her OG treatment of Diana) is, too.
Speaking of photography, we all know that Chris Jackson edits the heck out of Kate’s photos… but in the pictures he posted on his insta from the commonwealth day event, in one you can very clearly see Kate’s lace from her hair topper in her part. It’s blatant. I wonder how long before it gets pulled down?