Last weekend, Kate Middleton was reportedly spotted at her favourite farm shop in Windsor. As reported by The Sun, the Princess of Wales looked ‘happy, relaxed and healthy’ at the farm just a mile from her Adelaide Cottage home, according to onlookers. While there aren’t any pictures from the farm shop stop, Kate was said to have been casually shopping with Prince William. Then, in another picture-less endeavour, multiple tabloids report that she was also seen in Windsor watching her children (George, 10, Charlotte, eight, and Louis, five) take part in sports.

The walkabouts come after speculation around Kate’s health reached a fever pitch last week. Following months of intense debate online about her medical leave for abdominal surgery – which will see her off public duties until the end of the Easter holidays – Kensington Palace published a Mother’s Day portrait of Kate with her children that was killed by respected picture agencies due to ‘image manipulation’. Kate then released a statement taking responsibility for editing the image and apologising for ‘any confusion’ it caused.

The ordeal has lit a fire under online discourse about her health. Where conspiracy theories were previously being shared in royal obsessive circles, the story has now broken into the mainstream as the likes of Kim Kardashian, Stephen Colbert and John Oliver have begun publicly questioning what’s going on behind the scenes.

On last week’s episode of Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen, comedian John Oliver explained, ‘I was out. I thought, “Let’s all just ignore this we’ve moved on,” until the photoshop thing. That feels, like, you’re almost handling badly in an impressive way at this point.’

Now, it seems Oliver’s take is increasingly being shared by royal experts. Far from quelling concerns, every new development in this story only appears to be fuelling the fire.

Initially, the party line from the Palace appeared to be their usual: keep calm and carry on. All the public were told is that Kate had spent 12 days hospitalised at The London Clinic for abdominal surgery and that she would be recovering at home until Easter. They requested privacy on behalf of the Princess and made it clear updates about her condition would not be given unless they were significant, stating ‘The Princess of Wales appreciates the interest this statement will generate. She hopes that the public will understand her desire to maintain as much normality for her children as possible; and her wish that her personal medical information remains private.’

And yet, in the months that followed this initial statement in December (Kate Middleton has not been seen at a public duty since Christmas Day, but was spotted in an unverified, unauthorised Paparazzi picture published by US tabloids earlier this month), there have been a series of what seem like panicked moves from the Palace.

First the doctored Mother’s Day picture (in which the absence of Kate’s wedding ring was a particular bone of contention to fuel the conspiracy theorists), then Kate’s apology that only resulted in the public having more questions than answers. And despite calls for the Palace to release the original image and put commentators to rest, nothing in response.

‘Behind the scenes, whispers are that lessons can only be learnt from this PR disaster if the client – in this case William and Catherine – allow the professional communications experts they pay to do their job,’ royal biographer Robert Jobson has written in this week’s Grazia. ‘Their “do it yourself “marketing is understandable for a family who want to prioritise normality for their children. But, as this scenario has shown, when it is done in rush without full disclosure to their team things go wrong… In the age of AI when the camera not only can lie, but does frequently, if the royal brand is to be believed, it must be authentic, or it risks damaging the public’s trust of the royal family.’

And damaged trust it certainly has, with last weekend’s walkabout now being treated with similar caution online. Again, the public are questioning how such a widely reported outing from Kate – where onlookers were able to spot her twice and note how ‘healthy’ and ‘relaxed’ she seems – didn’t result in any photographic evidence at all. Many are thus questioning the validity of the story, and whether it is yet another mis-stepped PR move from the Palace.

Of course, we must remember the so-called ‘gentleman’s agreement’ policed by Kensington Palace PR gurus, Jobson adds. Essentially, the Wales’ have historically worked with the British press by providing stage-managed family photos, with the unsaid understanding that UK media won’t use paparazzi or publicly taken pictures of them in return (which is why we rarely see non-professional pictures, or pap shots, of the royal family printed in Britain).

Today, with US tabloids, and online commentators, spreading rumours that the ‘BBC is on standby for a major Royal Family announcement’ it seems the furore around this debacle is only growing. To be clear, the BBC have not commented, and any suggestion of an impending royal announcement is pure speculation.

What all of this does prove though is that cynicism toward the royal family – in Britain and now seemingly crossing the pond – is at an all-time high. With the last few years of family fallouts and Prince Andrew scandals already contributing to an increasingly fraught relationship between the public and the monarchy, the clunky responses from the Palace to this latest scandal show the real cracks in the royal PR machine. Certainly, each new development is starting to denote a level of desperation for public approval we’ve never quite seen from the Palace before.