Sarah Vine: We all owe Kate a big apology over the fallout of THAT photo

Never explain, never apologise, the old saying goes. But there are times when one must do both.

We all, to a greater or lesser extent, owe the Prince and Princess of Wales an apology — myself included — for giving them such a hard time over that doctored Mother’s Day photo, as well as Prince William’s last-minute decision to pull out of his godfather’s memorial service.

Following the princess’s announcement that she is suffering from cancer and in the early stages of treatment, it’s clear what was behind both.

Such devastating news is hard enough at the best of times; trying to deal with a diagnosis as frightening as this one while also fending off endless speculation must be nigh on impossible.

With hindsight, everything falls into place. The photo, the memorial service, the muddle over whether the princess would or would not be attending Trooping the Colour.

It’s a lesson to us all to not be so quick to jump to conclusions, not to get swept up in speculation — and a salutary reminder that, for all the responsibilities the Royal Family carry, they are people, too, and they bleed like the rest of us.

In today’s world, the circumspection that marked the late Queen’s reign feels an anomaly. We now live in an age of over-sharing, where everyone complains pretty much all the time about the various injustices, real or perceived, that afflict them.

We now almost expect people to be open about every aspect of their lives, good or bad.

If they hold back, it somehow feels a little suspicious. What do you mean, you don’t want to tell the whole world all about your heartbreak/in-grown toenail/mental health struggles?

When it comes to celebrities, Royals and politicians, we feel we almost have a right to know.

It has resulted in a subtle, but undeniable cultural shift, one which, when combined with the vast and unrestrained reach of the internet and the toxic influence of social media, can lead to vicious storms of the kind the Waleses have been subjected to.

Someone such as the princess, who’s never once in all her years as a Royal shown even a flicker of displeasure or uttered a word of complaint, is very rare — especially in public life. And yet she’s always made herself so available to the public, not so much by baring her soul, as Princess Diana did, but by being the one reliable constant, by always and unfailingly showing up and being on display.

That is why her absence and the subsequent confusion surrounding the Mother’s Day photo caused such alarm. For those of us who pay close attention to the Royals, it was alljust very out of character. The prince and princess always play such a straight bat: why on earth would they doctor a photo? Something just felt off, and now we know what.

Like many, I felt it was not the princess’s fault (though, characteristically, she took responsibility, more a failing on the part of Kensington Palace staff. They should have realised that it would end up raising more questions than it answered.

Still, the fact remains that the furore it caused must have been very distressing to Kate in her current condition, and for that I am sorry. Moreover, as a mother of two children who has sometimes had to contend with the effects of life in the public eye (albeit on a much smaller scale, of course), I know how hard it can be to manage the fallout from malicious rumours or the wilful misinterpretation of the facts.

No matter how hard you try to shield them, you can never protect them completely. And there is nothing that weighs more on a parent’s heart than seeing their child suffer.

That is why those who also need to apologise and perhaps take a long, hard look at themselves at the same time are all those social-media speculators who fuelled the circus of cruel conspiracy theories around the princess, which ranged from the bonkers to the downright disgusting.

However stern the criticism by the mainstream media of the doctored photo, nothing came close to the rabid disregard for the truth exhibited by online trolls.

Even some celebrities couldn’t resist joining in: Kim Kardashian captioned a recent Instagram post ‘on my way to go find Kate’. And there are plenty more who allowed themselves to be sucked in to the feeding frenzy.

It was clear from the princess’s heartbreaking video message that all this has taken its toll. She looked so very fragile and vulnerable, sitting all alone on a garden bench, her voice trembling, sorrow in her eyes, as she explained the circumstances of her diagnosis and the truth about the past few weeks.

Now that we finally see the full picture, it’s clear that this brave and beautiful woman has had just about as much as she can take. The world needs to back off now and give her and her family the space and time to heal.