Séamas O'Reilly: Even the most reluctant conspiracy theorist must wonder about Kate Middleton

Such cries fall on deaf ears, so I try and keep people abreast with as much intel as I can without being murdered on the grounds of Sandringham Palace.

I didn’t expect to become a royal correspondent but I’m quite enjoying the gig. 

Regular readers will recall I don’t have much interest in their private lives, nor their professional roles but, functionally, digesting royal drama is very similar to recapping Eastenders, or Game of Thrones, and throws me back to the halcyon days of online media when such cultural coverage was still a profitable concern.

So here’s my best shot: In January, Kate Middleton, Princess of Wales, was reported by Palace bigwigs to be taking a break from royal duties following minor abdominal surgery. 

Despite this being quite widely reported, and fairly sensible on its own terms, Middleton’s prolonged absence from the public record became a growing fascination to those with a mind toward gossip or scandal.

Now, looking back at the first raft of memes about her “disappearance” they seem almost quaint, no longer funny because time has marched on, giving us a thousand evolutions of their formats in the month since. 

And, at some point around the middle of February, almost everyone was aware that the Princess had not been seen in public since Christmas Day, and a steady rumbling of intrigue gained volume.

Some of this “concern” was in earnest. The UK has, after all, no shortage of people whose interest in royal affairs doesn’t so much “border on the weird”, as “plant its flag deep inside the territory of the insane”. 

Like Kathy Bates in Misery, they feel not merely attached to them as an institution, or as individuals, but believe themselves fully entitled to knowledge of every single thing they do at all times. If ever this hunger is denied, they reflexively launder their disappointment into “concern”, and thence to wild speculation as to what exactly is going on.

ALARM AND BLUSTER

It's more important to say, however, that 99% of those who picked up the #WhereIsKate banner were getting in on what had now become a communal national joke. The alarm and bluster of the central premise – the royals are hiding a princess! - appeared too funny for many to resist. 

And then, as so often happens with irony-fuelled online movements, it became harder and harder to see where jokes and facts departed. Grainy photos were analysed like Big Foot footage, prolix schemes were intuited from minor public statements, impossibly complex micro-dramas mapped out from sprawling webs of royal acquaintances, rumours of affairs and secret illness. 

By the time such scuttlebutt had leaped from timelines to front pages and Kate’s uncle was drafted into Celebrity Big Brother, it felt like some dam in the story had been breached.

And then came Sunday, and Kate’s infamous Mother’s Day message; a bland picture of her with her three children, captioned with warm wishes for all those asking how she was. 

Unfortunately for anyone hoping to quell suspicion, the image bore hallmarks of manipulation and was soon being passed around festooned with so many circled-and-magnified defects that even the most reluctant conspiracy theorist was forced to wonder what was going on. 

Wonky fingers, weird reflections, disappearing sleeves. Three of the world’s biggest photo agencies announced they would not be allowing the image’s use on their platforms, and the tinder box was blown sky high.

CREDULITY STRETCHED

My innate “calm down” senses told me the disputed photograph was likely subject to the usual touch up, albeit a weirdly bad job. 

In six years of writing a parenting column, I’ve had four byline photos featuring my children, and each has been a composite of different shots; faces swapped and hands moved around, because it is a universal truth that any photo involving more than one child will depict one looking cherubic and another looking like an insane freak. 

In my case, this is uncontroversial to the point of tedium, largely because I am not the most famous woman in the world and my family photos have not been submitted to a hungry public as a proof of life. That the royals did not realise this difference is so strange as to be — I hate to admit it — suspicious.

Soon after, Kate took to social media to say she had done the editing herself. It was at this point I felt, perhaps for the first time, that something really was afoot. 

I have no doubt in my mind that Kate enjoys photography, but the idea of the future queen hunched over her laptop, isolating blends and blurring the joins in LightBox, and then sending the resulting image to be distributed, unvetted, by the most sophisticated press apparatus in the country, stretched my credulity to the hilt. 

Aside from all else, there is simply nothing less believable than a royal having a computer hobby. It is, after all, 95% of the monarchy's appeal: you know that none of these people have ever had to learn a password in their lives.

The simplest explanation is that her press team have, perhaps innocently, messed up the comms for a woman contentedly observing her pre-arranged medical rest, and are a bit too posh and inexperienced to work out how to navigate the insanity they’re continuing to cause. Or, to quote All The President’s Men, “these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand”.

I like to think that. Because if she truly is unable to appear in public for reasons other than those stated, few of the remaining explanations seem much fun. 

That’s the problem with jokes on the internet. Give them enough time and they’re not funny anymore.