Princess Kate and Prince William's office was once hailed as a sleek, modern, youthful machine. What went wrong?

By Lucia Stein, Rebecca Armitage and Michelle Rimmer in London, ABC

Analysis - As spring bloomed in London last year, the newly crowned King Charles got into a very British stoush with his daughter-in-law, Catherine.

Both the monarch and the Princess of Wales showed up at the Chelsea Flower Show on the same day.

While this might seem like no problem at all, it turned into a multi-day story about whether Charles was being overshadowed - perhaps deliberately - by his son's glamorous, popular wife.

Kate, dressed in a pink shirt-dress and pictured chatting with school kids, knocked her father-in-law off the front page of almost every British newspaper.

"It's a shame that his visit with Her Majesty the Queen [Camilla] received less coverage than might have been expected. I hope they are not too disappointed," one unnamed "palace source" told the Daily Mail.

"Charles is unlikely to be amused. Gardens are very much his thing," another source told the Daily Beast.

The solution may have been as simple as a shared family calendar, a quick phone call, or a carpool to the flower show to marvel at the gardens together.

But it renewed a debate about the different styles adopted by the Buckingham Palace aides serving King Charles and the machine behind Kate and William at Kensington Palace.

Only a few weeks before the flower furore, the Prince and Princess of Wales released a shiny video on Instagram to celebrate Coronation Day.

Featuring just 14 seconds of Charles during the five-minute montage, some royal commentators suggested the slick production was a sign that William and Kate were gearing up for the digital future - and leaving the monarch behind.

"Their courts are distinct; Charles' operation is more wily, grand and formal, while William and Kate run a leaner, call-me-by-my-first-name operation, and one that is, as the recent post-coronation Instagram video showed, significantly more clued-up when it comes to online," royal correspondent Tom Sykes wrote for the Daily Beast.

"Their staff are youthful, with a smattering of digital natives who would find using the very term 'court' to describe themselves almost hilarious."

With their online presence making the most of Kate and William's beautiful young family, the future king and queen have often been heralded as the savvy digital future of the House of Windsor.

But this shiny reputation was seriously tarnished in the last few weeks by the royal couple's handling of Kate's mysterious illness.

While she recovered from "planned abdominal surgery", Kensington Palace aides have fumbled her request for privacy with a series of increasingly catastrophic PR manoeuvres that turned the Princess of Wales into the internet's obsession.

A poorly Photoshopped family snap, withdrawn by news agencies over concerns of digital manipulation and then blamed on Kate's overly enthusiastic use of the lasso tool, took things from bad to worse.

"They've got a long way to go to try and get public trust back now. That's the sad outcome of this," says Robyn Sefiani, a public relations advisor and president of ANZ & Reputation Counsel.

How did it all go so wrong?

While the Photoshop fail may haunt the Prince and Princess of Wales for years to come, this is not the first misstep by their office.

From a no-show at the women's World Cup to a photo stunt that raised eyebrows in Jamaica, Kate and William have had their fair share of PR fumbles.

Experts say it shows the challenges this ancient institution faces in a modern media environment, one they must meet if they hope to persist for generations to come.

Sleek social media made everyone think this was a professional outfit

Image is key to the House of Windsor, whose very survival depends on public support.

Unlike Europe's modest "bicycle monarchies", the British royal family has staked its future on a steady churn of publicity around its most senior members.

To earn the public's faith, the family has had to change the way it engages with its subjects.

When the Windsors and the machine behind them are working in tandem, they can successfully craft a message that allows them to connect with a fragmented audience.

A quick scroll through the Kensington Palace social media accounts provides plenty of examples of a sophisticated PR campaign at work.

"It's a hugely popular Instagram account and they were really using that digital footprint well, until [the Photoshop scandal]," royal commentator Afua Hagan says.

Glossy videos of William, Kate and their three children make the most of their picture-perfect family or inspire awe over the athleticism of the Prince and Princess of Wales playfully running after their wayward offspring.

At other times, footage of the royals is used to showcase the family's commitment to special causes such as children's charities and climate change.

Each video delivers a different message, but the strategy behind all of them is likely the same: to stay relevant and popular.

The attention to detail extends to the palace's slick video production.

A simple moment, such as Kate sitting down to play the piano, becomes a scene worthy of The Crown when spliced with drone footage zooming in on the palace window and wide shots of the stately room the princess is performing in.

Often, the off-the-shoulder shooting is accompanied by emotive (if somewhat generic) music that makes you want to be just like the Windsors, complete with Barbour raincoat and vintage Range Rover.

"They're very good at getting the good news out," Sefiani says.

"What they're not so good at - and that's come to light this week - is handling the bad news."

And no amount of sleek digital content can overcome a litany of unforced errors.

Kate and William have had their fair share of PR fumbles

Though often portrayed as the picture-perfect, digital-savvy representatives of the modern House of Windsor, the Prince and Princess of Wales have made mistakes.

In recent years, they have fumbled their way through minor (and major) mishaps.

When England's women's team made it to the World Cup final in Australia in August last year, Prince William faced criticism for failing to make the journey to cheer the group on.

"I will not have any bad words against the royal family. However, this should have been pencilled in [William's] diary from day dot, after we won the Euros and qualified for the World Cup," former England goalkeeper Pauline Cope told Times Radio.

"Let's be honest, if it was the men's World Cup, they would all be here."

Prince William, seemingly in an effort to repair the damage wrought by his absence, released a video apology with his daughter Princess Charlotte.

Good luck for tomorrow @Lionesses pic.twitter.com/a4WJ7ycVTK

— The Prince and Princess of Wales (@KensingtonRoyal) August 19, 2023

But the message lost some of its impact when contrasted with the image of Spain's queen dancing with her team in Sydney.

The minor PR disaster pales in comparison to the calamity that was the Prince and Princess of Wales' Caribbean tour.

What had started as a bid to win over a new generation of subjects, swiftly backfired.

A Guardian report at the time indicated the then Duke and Duchess of Cambridge's efforts may have "accelerated moves to ditch the queen as the head of state".

Photographs of the couple standing in an open-top Land Rover and reaching out to grab the hands of children through a wire fence gave rise to awkward recollections of the monarchy's colonial past.

"They had some pretty dodgy PR moments with some of the pictures that came out," says Ms Hagan.

In one of the tour's most memorable moments, Jamaica's Prime Minister Andrew Holness told the couple his country intended to become a republic, boldly remarking "we're moving on".

"We intend to attain in short order development goals and fulfil our true ambitions - as an independent, developed, prosperous country," he said.

Ultimately, the messaging on that tour was pretty poor at best, says Ms Hagan.

"Since then they have overhauled their PR and comms team because that was an absolute PR disaster," she said.

"The public relations and comms team, again, let them down massively with the messaging, with the pictures that came out from that tour. So then you do have a reputation of falling down."

When a communications strategy goes wrong, either because the advice is bad or it is not followed correctly, it can lead to significant blunders.

And this week, we saw this play out in real-time when an edited photo fuelled an already raging inferno of rumour and speculation about Princess Kate's condition.

Reputable international news agencies sent out a kill order over Kensington Palace's Mother's Day post, with the Associated Press stating that the source had manipulated the image.

While it may seem harmless to the casual observer, a representative of Agence France-Presse, another news agency that retracted the image, revealed the seriousness of the situation to BBC Radio 4's Media Show.

Phil Chetwynd, global news director of AFP, explained there was a level of trust between the agency and Kensington Palace when it came to photos the royals supplied because "they are people we work with all the time".

The Mother's Day photo was initially validated by AFP's internal system, but when problems were spotted, Mr Chetwynd said "all the photo editors at all the major agencies … got together and spoke about it".

When asked "if Kensington Palace is still a trusted source" after the editing experiment, he replied: "No, absolutely not."

"Like with anything, when you're let down by a source, the bar is raised and we've got major issues internally as to how we validate that photo," he said.

"...Therefore, we sent out notes to all our teams at the moment to be absolutely super vigilant about the content coming across our desk, even from what we would call trusted sources."

Not only is Kensington Palace's reputation being called into question but the incident has only further added to speculation among the public that they are not being told the full truth.

Of course, it is not just the Prince and Princess of Wales who are responsible for their brand.

They are surrounded by a team of people who assist with crafting their message.

The machine behind the Prince and Princess

Kate and William have a staff fit for a future king and queen.

Kensington Palace is estimated to include about 60 employees, including a communications team, household staff and a personal stylist and hairdresser.

After Queen Elizabeth II died in 2022, the couple were elevated to the rank of Prince and Princess of Wales and they quickly set about hiring a new leadership team.

Last September, Kensington Palace advertised a job ad on a UK recruitment agency seeking a chief executive who must be "emotionally intelligent" and have a "low ego".

It is unclear if the position was ever filled, but the appointment of a chief executive would be a break with royal tradition.

Most senior working royals appoint private secretaries, all-powerful aides who run their day-to-day activities as well as shaping their overarching strategy - similar to a chief of staff.

While the search for a chief executive to sit at the top of the staffing tree continues, William recently hired a new private secretary - Ian Patrick, who has also worked for former Liberal Democrat leader Lord Ashdown.

Meanwhile, Kate chose Lieutenant Colonel Tom White, the queen's former equerry, as her new private secretary just days ago.

The couple has a relatively large social media and communications team compared to other working royals, according to Ms Hagan.

"They do have a pretty big PR and communications team and social media team around them," she said.

"So it beggars belief that nobody checked this image, spotted that it had been altered and thought to themselves, 'Actually, in the current climate that we are in where, there's been so much speculation about your whereabouts, Princess of Wales, it's probably not a good idea to put out a manipulated picture because people will jump to the wrong conclusions.'"

Ms Hagan said it is unclear whether this was a case of bad advice or advice being ignored by the client.

"Either they're surrounded with yes people who will just do whatever they say and are not properly advising them," she said.

"Or it went through them and they thought it was a good idea. So it's either stupidity or wilful ignorance, and I'm not sure which one is worse."

What does this mean for William and Kate's future reign?

The Prince and Princess of Wales will become king and queen in an age that is worlds apart from when Queen Elizabeth first acceded the throne.

In decades past, the royal family could assert more control over its narrative, while maintaining a shroud of mystery around its members.

But the relationship between the monarch and their subjects has dramatically changed and in the 21st century, the institution is facing more public scrutiny than ever before.

At the same time, there has been a shift in social attitudes to traditional institutions, which means the crown is treated with less deference than it is used to.

"The royals don't really fit in with the modern age, and this [Photoshop scandal] is the first time it's really [shown] that they're in a real PR disaster," says Lauren Beeching, a PR consultant with Honest London.

"That's how I see it, they just can't keep up with the modern age."

Prince William and Kate, along with his brother Prince Harry and Meghan, were once seen as the perfect representatives to usher in a brighter future for the monarchy.

Now the spare and his wife are in self-imposed exile, regularly battling with the press and both forging ahead with new career paths after Meghan's return to Instagram this week.

That has left the future king and queen as the sole figures to steer the monarchy and carry out necessary reforms once Charles dies.

Recent missteps and the uncertainty around Kate's health, along with the Photoshop scandal, have raised serious questions about their ability to adapt to a shifting public climate.

But just as the queen did after the furore around her handling of the death of Diana, this PR scandal could provide lessons in how to engage with their subjects that would last a lifetime.

The question is will the Wales turn the controversy into a transformational moment or cement it as an embarrassing mishap that mars their legacy?

This story was originally published by the ABC.