The Royals May Never Escape What’s Happened With Kate Middleton.

She’s not dead. She was in that grocery store. It no longer matters.

t’s been just over a week since Kate Middleton, the internet’s favorite “missing person,” claimed that a photoshopped image of her with her children on U.K. Mother’s Day was edited by her, for unspecified reasons. Then, on Monday, we had our first recorded sighting of the princess, out shopping with Prince William at the Royal Farms Windsor Farm Shop, near Windsor Castle. The video was released by TMZ and the Sun, and stills from it were plastered on the front pages of all the British tabloids Tuesday. Supposedly, it was taken by a 40-year-old man, Nelson Silva, who lives nearby and was quoted in TMZ as saying: “Kate looked happy and relaxed. They look happy just to be able to go to a shop and mingle. Kate looked relieved, like it was a success going to a shop. It felt natural.”
here she is: not dead, not apparently dying, not a surprise contestant on The Masked Singer, not any of it. This should put all the conspiracy theories to bed now, right?

Of course not. Immediately, the online masses jumped on the video. Claiming that the footage was too grainy to see whether it was actually Kate Middleton. Saying that the bags she was carrying would have been too heavy for someone who recently had abdominal surgery. Comparing the heights of Kate’s and William’s eyelines in this footage with others and suggesting that this Kate was too tall to be the real Kate. Saying that the heart-shaped decorations visible behind the couple on some wooden huts outside the shop were Christmas-themed, and that the video was therefore old. I even saw someone arguing that the woman in the video looks more like Rose Hanbury, otherwise known as (content warning: nuclear Britishness) the Marchioness of Cholmondeley, whom William is rumored, without evidence, to be having an affair with.