How the Kate Middleton Story Flew So Spectacularly Off the Rails – E! Online

Other than that one canceled engagement, William was sticking to his official schedule, the 42-year-old future king engaging in light banter remaining the picture of what-we’re-used-to normalcy.

Decorating cookies at a youth center in London, he told the group around him, “My wife is the arty one,” and “my children are artier than I am.”

Also that day, however, Kensington Palace got a scolding from Agence France-Presse in the wake of the family photo debacle.

“At this moment in time, AFP’s trust in handout pictures from the [Kensington] Palace has been compromised,” AFP global news director Phil Chetwynd said in a statement to E! News. “We cannot say they are a trusted source for handout pictures. We still require further explanations.”

Which did not mean that the agency wouldn’t accept the palace’s photos. Rather, Chetwynd explained, they would “be subject to heightened scrutiny and editing checks.” He said he considered it “normal journalistic practice to be skeptical about future interactions.”

But Chetwynd added that AFP hoped to “rebuild this trust over time.”