The public is overwhelmed by the latest photo of Kate Middleton taken by the American tabloid TMZ. Although no British tabloids shared the photo, it found its way on the social media. Kate could be seen wearing sunglasses in the passenger seat of a car.

Following her “planned” abdominal surgery, the palace cleared Kate’s schedule completely, and the public got excited to see that she was about to appear in public earlier than expected when the Minister of Defense confirmed that Kate Middleton will attend the Trooping the Colour dress rehearsal ceremony on June 8, ahead of the main event on June 15.

However, it later turned out that it was a mistake and that Kate’s potential return to royal duty event has been deleted from an Army website. As per GB News, Kensington Palace was “not consulted” regarding the Princess of Wales’ appearance.

This, along with the photo of Kate published in the American media, led to even greater speculations surrounding her exact health condition.

The Palace did all in their power to protect the Princess’ privacy. There was no media around when she left the hospital nor when she traveled to the Anmer Hall estate in Sandringham some weeks ago, so this leaked photo has been seen as a failure and disappointment for the palace.

According to Newsweek’s chief royal correspondent Jack Royston, the one to be blamed about this entire situation is the Palace.

“The kind of secrecy that Kensington Palace brought to this situation fuelled completely feverish wild speculation online, and that creates the demand that means TMZ know that they’re going to make big bucks running these pictures because they know that huge numbers of people are going to go and click on this story,” Royston told Good Morning Britain on Tuesday.

“And that means that they can pay big amounts of money to the photographer, which makes it worth the photographer’s while to take the risk to get these pictures.”

He claimed the Palace could have handled everything better and put a stop to the speculations long ago.

“Kate could have taken a picture herself. She could have taken a selfie. William could have taken it. It didn’t need to be a good picture. Didn’t need to be a high-res image. It just needed to be a picture or a little video like Charles did,” he continued.

“What’s effectively happened is they’ve allowed this to snowball into a massive thing, and if they’d got ahead of it then they would have actually protected Kate better,” Jack Royston continued when appearing on Good Morning Britain.

“It probably felt to them at the time like they were protecting her and shielding her by just leaving her to get on with her recovery undisturbed but actually this is not protecting Kate. Her being papped in Windsor, the [Daily] Mail is speculating that she may have been on the school run, that that’s not protecting her. She was not going to feel protected in this moment.”

Other experts believe the entire thing has been fishy from the start.

According to Christopher Andersen, the author of the book The King, if the Princess has in deed been feeling better as the Palace claims, then she should have stepped out in the public and at least smile fro the photographers.

“Keep in mind that members of the royal family in particular are famous for getting out there [and] keeping up appearances no matter what,” Andersen told Fox News. “Queen Elizabeth never spent months recovering from an illness, and over the course of her 70-year reign, she dealt with a number of serious medical issues. So, the mystery surrounding Kate’s surgery and what it was for deepens.”

Although she wants to keep things private, it “wouldn’t have hurt” her to “pop her head above the parapet every now and then.”

“It may also be that her medical problem, whatever it is, gave her a new appreciation of what she regards as truly important in life – spending time at home with her children. Kate really is such a pro at handling the press and the public, for her to remain out of sight like this really has to make one wonder: What in God’s name is going on?” he concluded.

Daniela Elser believes that the TMZ photo hides a deeper story.

“With these new images, it’s depressing that it looks a lot like Kate felt she had to let her face be seen in public to stem the tide of delirium. There is something just a bit screwy and upsetting and off-kilter about the internet rabble being able to alter the plan for the 42-year-old’s recovery.”

She also claimed that Prince William canceling a royal duty because of a personal matter last week added to the controversy. Since he contributed to the mess, he’s the one who needs to clear ti up and no leave it up to his wife.

“Thus, the prince helped make the mess – why isn’t he helping clean it up? Why has it fallen to Kate, who had some sort of surgery significant enough to warrant two weeks in hospital, to dispel the grab bag of daft theories about where she is and what might be going on?” she continued.

Elser asked whether the photo shows a woman ready to be back on display or to be “put on public view like a museum specimen.”

“I suppose if there is one lesson to be drawn from all this is that princesses might get all the gee-gaws and diamonds they might fancy but choice? Freedom? Real independence? Maybe there’s no such thing as a free ten-bedroom Norfolk estate after all. Everything has a price,” Elser stated.