Dutch king pokes fun at Princess of Wales’s photo-editing row
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The King of the Netherlands has waded into the royal Photoshop row by making a joke at the Princess of Wales’s expense.
King Willem-Alexander was greeting members of the public in Zutphen, one of the country’s oldest cities, on Tuesday. As he bent down to speak to a group of flag-waving schoolchildren wearing orange paper crowns, a little girl made a reference to “a photograph with your whole family”.
The King replied: “Really? At least I didn’t Photoshop it.”
The joke was not lost on the adults standing behind the children, who burst out laughing as the grinning monarch moved on to greet another group of onlookers.
‘He appears to joke about Kate-gate’
The Dutch Telegraph (De Telegraaf) described it as a “striking moment during a work visit by King Willem-Alexander in Zutphen, where he appears to joke about Kate-gate”.
It comes after the Princess was forced to admit that she had edited a photograph of herself and her three children released to mark Mothering Sunday.
The portrait was recalled by five of the world’s biggest picture agencies – Getty, Associated Press, Agence France-Presse, Shutterstock and Reuters – because it had been “manipulated”.
The joke exchange was caught on camera by Rick Evers, the Dutch royal reporter, who first revealed that King Charles and the Princess of Wales had been named as the alleged “royal racists” in the Dutch translation of Omid Scobie’s book, Endgame.
Mr Evers posted photographs of the extracts on social media, prompting a row about how the names had found their way into the public domain. The book alleged that both the King and the Princess had made comments about Prince Archie’s skin tone.
Close-knit royal families
King Willem-Alexander and his wife, Queen Maxima, are understood to be on friendly terms with the Prince and Princess of Wales.
The two couples were photographed together at the Order of the Garter service and at Ascot in 2019.
The Dutch royals also attended the King’s Coronation in May last year.
Their daughter, Princess Alexia, studied for the International Baccalaureate at UWC Atlantic College, a boarding school in Wales popular with European royals.
