Seemingly the entire world has taken a renewed interest in the British royal family in recent weeks, owing to the face that Catherine, the Princess of Wales and Prince William’s wife, hasn’t been seen in public in months, and Kensington Palace (her residence) has been releasing increasingly bizarre statements that have only exacerbated people’s concerns.

It’s unclear at the moment whether she’s recovering from a medical procedure or about to be cut out of the family via divorce. But what is clear is that a photo released of Kate with her three children for Mother’s Day was undoubtedly photoshopped, and probably not by Kate herself, despite the Palace’s claims.

@matta_of_fact The #Palace is probably surprised that we’re up in arms over this #KateMiddleton #royal photoshop scandal…because they’ve been getting away with manipulating portraits of the #RoyalFamily for centuries ☕️ #princesskate #princessofwales ##kensingtonpalace#willandkate #r#royalsbuckinghampalace #r#royaltyr#royalteab#britishroyalsb#britishroyalfamilyr#royalexpertr#royalnewsr#royalupdater#royalscandalr#royalgossip ♬ Pop beat BGM / long version(1283324) - nightbird_bgm

One TikToker took this opportunity to share examples from history of ways the British royals have been successfully getting away with doctored images for centuries, meaning they were probably taken aback by the response to Kate’s photo, which included reputable newswires issuing “kill notices” for the image, retracting it and citing “manipulation” as the reason.

The first example cited in the video is a portrait of Henry VIII in which he looks to be in reasonable health, which itself is a manipulation — the portrait was painted “well past his prime” when he no longer looked like that. In addition, pictured is his third wife, Jane Seymour, who was dead at the time the portrait was made, when he was instead married to Catherine Parr. But Seymour was the one that got away (by dying prematurely), so Henry wanted her in the portrait alongside their son, Edward VI.

This habit of manipulating or distorting images and facts in order to portray a picture-perfect family has only increased over the years, even once technology improved and royals began having their photographs taken. Queen Victoria was the first royal to try their hand at photo manipulation, reigning just as photography as a practice was becoming more and more widespread. In the Victorian era, people would manipulate photos by manipulating photographic plates, which allowed them to do things like smooth out skin texture. In Victoria’s case, she asked photographers to edit out her double chin, meaning Queen Victoria probably invented FaceTune. The Kardashians owe her a huge debt of gratitude.

The royals probably miss the olden days for a lot of reasons — they had significantly more power, influence and relevance, for one — but it was definitely easier to mislead the public with overly-flattering portraits before the invention of photography, Photoshop, the internet and armchair sleuths.