The palace briefed out that the unspecified abdominal issues were not cancer, and thereupon a guessing game commenced.

A process of deduction identified the possibilities, all of them a-thrum with one underlying note: would this affect how Kate’s body looks?

If the body was under threat from illness or disease, what did this mean? Why didn’t Kate want to be seen? What had happened to her appearance?

The internet took off. “Where is Kate” became a trending social media topic. Memes joking about Kate’s disappearance proliferated.

In the 15th century, the young brother-princes Edward V and Richard, Duke of York, were placed under “protection” in the Tower of London and never seen again.

In 1327, the deposed King Edward II was moved to Berkeley Castle in Gloucestershire. He was also never seen again - he was probably murdered on the orders of his wife, the queen.

Then, of course, there was Kate’s mother-in-law, devoured in plain sight and killed in a Parisian tunnel - an accident that has been the subject of conspiracy theories so powerful even her son Harry swallowed them.

No such fate was imagined for Kate, but royal disappearances do have a historical context.

No one knows that better than the marketing machine that comprises 90 per cent of the substance of modern monarchy.

People were speculating, wildly. The palace had lost control of the narrative. So: a sign of life was needed.

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The photograph had one intended function: to show the world that there was nothing to see here. Everything is fine.

The kids were dressed in wholesome woollens, upscale versions of the garb the characters in an Enid Blyton novel might wear while investigating a mystery on the Dorset Coast.

Kate was at the centre of the photograph, her children’s arms around her, beaming a smile. She looked well.

We all saw the rigging and were reminded that this was a performance; that none of this is real.

If the royals are going to pretend life is perfect; that their ongoing existence is not sticky-taped together by denial (of colonialism, of anachronism, of reality), then they at least need to be convincing about it.

The public engages in magical thinking when it comes to the royal family, but doctoring a photo shows a level of deliberate manipulation that is somehow still shocking to us.

Kate is one of the most famous people in the world, but we know nothing of her personality. It is deliberately left blank, like a non-applicable field on a form.

People talk about Kate’s “glamour” or her “elegance”.

Women’s magazines call her a “fashion icon” - a redundant compliment, like calling an Olympian “fit”. If your job is to be well-groomed, and you have a team of stylists and a limitless budget to accomplish it, do you really merit praise for being fashionable?

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Kate knows better than anyone that she wouldn’t be able to perform her role as effectively if she had a different body; if she was fatter, or less well-groomed, had a menopausal middle-section, or an extra chin, or visible signs of disease or disability.

Her function for the monarchy is to be photographed. She needs to photograph well, to use the euphemism.

The only thing Kate should be sorry for is apologising.

And, perhaps, sorry that the world into which she married no longer exists - it’s harder to hide monarchical manipulation now, even as it gets more tempting to manipulate.

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