A decade ago, their first Mother’s Day portrait was greeted with nothing but warmth. Now, as this doctored photo provokes a welter of conspiracy theories, we pose 20 questions Palace should answer to end the frenzied gossip about THAT picture

What enormous changes can happen in ten years.

In 2014, Kate and William released their first Mother’s Day photo.

Our report, printed on the front page of The Mail on Sunday, described the image as ‘a tender, natural and intimate portrait… never before has a royal portrait beckoned to an audience with the same promise of effortless informality’.

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, as they then were, were taken by an award-winning photographer at a window of their home in Apartment 1A of Kensington Palace, still virtually newlyweds.

Prince Harry had just launched his Invictus Games, while Meghan Markle was a relative unknown in Britain. She worked across the Atlantic filming the legal drama Suits and ran her lifestyle blog The Tig.

If a picture is worth a thousand words – although in both cases it was much more – in 2014 it was mainly platitudes and jokes. But amid the flurry of press coverage following last week’s Mother’s Day graphic, it would be safe to assume that quite a few were unprintable expletives.

There are still many unanswered questions (Kensington Palace declined to comment for this piece).

Kate’s admission that she tampered with the photo and her apology for it have sparked a furious debate about transparency and trust – a key pillar of public support for the monarchy.

Some Palace insiders felt that further comment would only give the story unwanted oxygen.

But the silence created a vacuum that led to unprecedented online ridicule and conspiracy theories.

That’s the level of controversy that the Daily Mail’s respected royal expert Richard Kay wrote yesterday: “If the royal family isn’t quite at the eleventh hour, it’s dangerously close.”

Unfortunately, what the public has been officially told is scarce. It was reported that William took the photo of his family on Friday, March 8.

It was published on the official Instagram of the Prince and Princess of Wales at 9am last Sunday and then sent to news media.

Kensington Palace quickly answered questions from journalists about why the princess was not wearing a wedding ring, but aides declined to comment.

By 8 p.m. on Sunday, the Associated Press news agency had issued a ‘kill notice’ stating that the image had been manipulated.

It was quickly followed by Getty, AFP and Reuters. At 10.30am on Monday, an unprecedented mea culpa attributed to the Princess was shared on Kensington Palace’s social media platforms. It reverberated around the world.

Italian newspaper La Repubblica called the incident “Photoshop-gate,” while Japan Today reported on the “Katespiracy” and El Universal, one of Mexico’s largest newspapers, said the photo was a “failure of the royal family’s communications strategy.” showed.

Analysis of the metadata, information attached to the images and left by the Palace when the photo was released, showed that it had been saved in Photoshop, an editing tool, once on Friday evening and again the next morning.

It soon became clear that many Britons supported the princess – who was said to be ‘shell-shocked’ – and saw the controversy as a storm in a teapot.

But as Kate continues to recover from serious abdominal surgery and William returns to work as normal this week with an engagement in Sheffield, following the chaos caused by his family’s Mother’s Day photo, there are fears that nothing will be ‘normal’ for the Royal family shortly.