London (CNN) — The Prince and Princess of Wales posted a photograph of a beaming Princess Charlotte to mark her ninth birthday.
The celebration photo was posted to the couple’s official social media accounts on Thursday with a note of thanks “for all the kind messages today.” The photo is credited to Kate, Princess of Wales, and was taken in recent days in Windsor.
It is the second photo in as many weeks of the Welsh, who last week celebrated the sixth birthday of their youngest son, Prince Louis. Prince William and Princess Kate have made it a tradition to release portraits of their children each year to mark their birthdays.
The Prince and Princess of Wales posted a photo of Princess Charlotte to mark her ninth birthday on Thursday, May 2. (Photo: CNN has not verified it. The Princess of Wales).
This is the second case in which we have seen a change in the publication of the Welsh photograph. Previously, Kensington Palace sent the portrait to the media under embargo so that the press could prepare for its publication. After the furor over Kate’s recent Mother’s Day photo, which was found to have been digitally altered, the palace’s release process has adapted. The new photo has not been verified by CNN.
Kensington Palace appears to be taking back some of the control and narrative by posting on social accounts only on that day, aware that any lack of honesty or sense of inauthenticity will spark all sorts of conspiracy theories as it did last time.
It has been a difficult start to 2024 for the British royal family. Kate has been away from public duties since Christmas and is currently undergoing cancer treatment.
Princess Charlotte was last seen in public during the British royal family’s traditional Christmas Day walk to church on the Sandringham estate in Norfolk. The nine-year-old girl was also seen in early December alongside her parents and siblings at her mother’s annual Christmas carol concert at London’s Westminster Abbey.
Last week, on a visit to a West Midlands school, Charlotte’s father, Prince William, shared his favorite joke with pupils at St Michael’s Church of England High School: a “knock knock” joke involving a cow that interrupts.
The Duchess of Cambridge. (Photo: Getty Images).
Charlotte is third in line to the throne, after her father and older brother, Prince George. And although she is one of the youngest members of the family, her mother revealed in 2017 that she is “the one in charge.”
Royal fans will remember a video of Charlotte at the state funeral of her grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, in 2022, in which she appeared to remind her older brother George to bow as the late monarch’s coffin passed by to them at Wellington Arch. He was also seen in a previous parade of Trooping the Color in London preventing his little brother, Prince Louis, from perhaps greeting the crowd too enthusiastically as his carriage passed by.
Last year, the little royal won people’s hearts with her royal resemblance to her mother, when they both attended the coronation of King Charles. For her grandfather’s big day, Carlota wore a miniature version of her mother’s ivory silk dress and silver headdress.
Charlotte is the first British princess not to have been advanced in the line of succession by a younger brother. This is because her grandmother, the late Queen Elizabeth II, changed the rules with the Succession to the Crown Act 2013 so that all royal children born after 2011 would have an equal right to the throne regardless of their age. sex.
Two years later, Charlotte Elizabeth Diana was born on May 2, 2015 at St. Mary’s Hospital in west London. The change meant that she did not lose her position in the line of succession after Prince Louis was born in 2018.
CNN’s Max Foster and Cat Nicholls contributed to this story.
