Who Dares?

Aussie Mag Defies Royals, Publishes Pictures of Princess Charlotte and Prince George

William and Kate appealed for magazines not to buy snatched pictures of their kids, claiming it feeds harassment. Now one has. What can they do?

Australian magazine Woman’s Day has become the first major international publication to openly flout a request by William and Kate not to purchase paparazzi pictures of their children.

The magazine has today published pictures of Charlotte and George with their nanny outside the gates of Kensington Palace.

In the kind of ‘cutesie’ copy known to drive William and Kate mad, Woman’s Day wrote: “In time spent cocooned at home in Anmer Hall with her mummy, little Charlotte has certainly grown. And, in excellent news, she looks just like her gorgeous big brother, Prince George.”

The magazine claims that the children were “spotted outside Kensington Palace watching the royal helicopter—carrying Great Auntie Princess Anne—land on the grounds.”

In August, Prince William and Kate Middleton took the unprecedented step of issuing an open letter seeking to protect their children from the “dangerous” and “distressing” tactics of press photographers.

In it they expressed the fear that if press photographers cannot be controlled, Prince George and Princess Charlotte could end up spending most of their childhoods “behind palace gates and in walled gardens”.

They also warned a photographer could end up getting mistaken for a security threat and shot.

The letter—signed by Will and Kate’s PR honcho, American Jason Knauf—also embarked on a high-risk strategy of effectively trying to bypass the editors of magazines by appealing directly to consumers.

Although it did not directly call for a boycott of magazines which feature pap shots of George, the letter almost went that far, saying, “We are aware that many people who read and enjoy the publications that fuel the market for unauthorized photos of children do not know about the unacceptable circumstances behind what are often lovely images. We feel readers deserve to understand the tactics deployed to obtain these pictures.”

What can Will and Kate do?

It will be interesting to see if Kensington Palace will try to publicly shame Woman’s Day.

Other than that, with the pictures taken in a public park, it seems their options to retaliate are limited.

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Tom SykesEuropean Editor at Large

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