Photo: Lingtren.com / Shutterstock, Wikimedia Commons, floranutricion / TikTok
The people in the photos fit Harry and Kate's description, but is there more to their story?
By John Sundholm — Written on Mar 10, 2023
It's no secret that the Prince and Princess of Wales, William, 40, and Kate Middleton, 41, and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Prince Harry, 38, and Meghan Markle, 41, are not exactly close friends nowadays.
Ever since Prince Harry's memoir "Spare" revealed all sorts of strife within the Royal Family—not to mention Harry and Meghan recently being snubbed from King Charles II's coronation and kicked out of their royal residence Frogmore Cottage—it's been easy to forget there was once a time when William, Harry, Kate and Meghan were the best of friends and even dubbed "The Fab Four."
But photos circulating on TikTok, allegedly from several years ago, have some people thinking that when it comes to Prince Harry and Kate Middleton, their relations may have been a lot friendlier than just sister and brother-in-law.
Leaked photos allegedly show Prince Harry and Kate Middleton embracing and kissing.
The images have gone viral on TikTok after being posted by Flora, a gossip TikToker known as @floranutricion on the app.
The photos allegedly show Prince Harry and Kate Middleton leaving a nightclub together.
In the onscreen text, @floranutricion explains that the images were leaked several years ago and allegedly show Prince Harry escorting Princess Kate out of a club to her car waiting outside.
In the photos, a man and woman appearing to be Harry and Middleton are seen with their arms around each other, embracing in what appears to be a more than sibling-like way. Subsequent photos show the man then kissing the woman in what appears to be a passionate goodbye smooch as they continue embracing.
"This leak is photos of Harry supposedly with Kate Middleton, his brother's wife, as they were caught leaving a club. They were leaked several years ago," Flora said in her video of the images.
The people in the photos fit Prince Harry's and Middleton's descriptions.
The man in the video has a similar height and build to Prince Harry, and he appears to have red hair with a similar haircut and balding pattern to Harry's.
The woman is even harder to make out clearly, as she's never fully lit by the streetlight falling directly on the man in the photos. But she does fit Kate Middleton's general description—a taller, thin woman with long brunette hair.
And as the TikTok below shows, Harry and Kate have been rumored to be more than friends in the past.
Whoever the pair is, they also have similar heights and proportions to each other as Prince Harry and Middleton do. Middleton stands 5'9" tall, while Prince Harry is 6'1"—about on par with the height difference that appears in the photos as the man and woman go in for their embraces and kisses.
The photos first circulated in 2009, however, and show Prince William and Kate Middleton kissing, not Prince Harry.
The images inspired more than a little skepticism among TikTokers. Some theorized it was actually Prince Harry and Kate Middleton's sister Pippa, who were rumored to have dated each other years ago as seen in the video below.
But most TikTokers seem convinced it was Prince William and Kate Middleton snogging in the photos. As one TikToker sniped, "it's William and Kate before they got married, it's well documented, Google is free."
And indeed that TikToker is correct—the photos have been around for a long, long time.
The Daily Mail reported in 2016 that the photos were of Prince William and Kate Middleton kissing outside the Potting Shed Pub in the UK county of Wiltshire, not far from where Middleton grew up in Bucklebury, Berkshire.
The photos first appeared in 2009, a few years before Prince William and Middleton's 2011 marriage and during their courtship after they first met at the University of St. Andrew's in 2001.
And as others pointed out, especially given that Prince Harry still had a full head of hair back in 2009, but Prince William had started balding at the time, the man in the photo definitely cannot be Prince Harry.
Given all the strife and ruined relationships between the royal siblings nowadays—and particularly the alleged bad blood between Markle and Middleton—it would be quite the juicy plot-thickener if Prince Harry and Princess Kate were once hot-and-heavy.
Sadly, it seems this soap opera-esque plotline is more fan-fiction than fact. Oh well.
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice and human interest topics.