AMANDA PLATELL: If we don't all give Kate a break, she may take a break from us. And then where would the Royal Family be...

After a week in which the Princess of Wales has been relentlessly and monstrously pounded over her Mother’s Day Photoshop mishap - accused of trickery, dishonesty and wilful deception - we are heading into uncharted waters.

Because her critics are surely in danger of driving Kate into shunning public life altogether. And, quite honestly, who could blame her if she did choose to go underground?

After being so cruelly attacked, there’s every possibility a ‘shell-shocked’ Kate could choose to cut back her future royal engagements once she’s recovered from her surgery. If people continue to treat her so badly, why on earth would she want to turn out for them on demand?

Let’s not forget that it’s perfectly within her powers, except where certain formal engagements such as State Occasions are concerned, to do just that. She is the mistress of her diary, and her presence at huge numbers of events is entirely at her discretion.

Just imagine where our already depleted and achingly dreary monarchy would be left without its shining star. An ailing King, an elderly Queen, William, Princess Anne and the Edinburghs.

We only have to remember how underwhelmingly drab Prince William looked on the red carpet at the Baftas last month without shimmering Kate by his side. Without her constant presence, the light would go out of the Royal Family.

Given we hadn’t seen her since Christmas Day at Sandringham (pictured), she was also innocently trying to reassure us that she and her young children were doing just fine

Why should she be so accused when she only did what millions of mums do, Photoshopped their family snaps to keep everyone happy and release it for Mother’s Day of all days?

And why should she be hounded like this when she only did what millions of mums have done - Photoshopped family snaps to keep everyone happy?

Insiders say she ‘just wanted to put out a nice picture of her family’. Who doesn’t?

Given we hadn’t seen her since Christmas Day at Sandringham, she was also trying to reassure us that she and her young children were doing just fine and that the ugly rumours on social media about her health were rubbish.

Kate was looking out for us and all she got was mud in her eye.

It doesn’t take a doctor to conclude the past week would have hurt her immeasurably, adding to her stress and, one fears, prolonging her convalescence.

She’s one of the most famous and photographed women in the world, with all the pressure that brings. Surely we should be saying not ‘where the hell are you?’ but sending her wishes for a speedy recovery.

Having sacrificed so much of her own privacy to become William’s wife, to bear the heavy burden of becoming the future queen and raise an heir and spares, George, Charlotte and Louis – and to give them all some semblance of the normal, happy family life William never had – surely the least we can do is to respect her privacy as she recovers.

Since her engagement to Prince William in 2010, Kate has not put a foot wrong. For more than a decade she has only enhanced the image of the royals, with her decency, integrity and, yes, glamour.

And all with a natural grace, like Diana’s, and an ability to appear equally at home with ordinary folk as she is with kings and queens.

The work she has done on early-stage learning, addiction and with homeless charities is not only tireless but highly respected. She also champions mental health causes, which is ironic given that those now attacking her give so little thought to her own mental health.

Frankly, I don’t know how she does it. And increasingly I’m wondering why she bothers.

After being so cruelly attacked, there’s every possibility a ‘shell-shocked’ Kate could choose to cut back her future royal engagements

She’s already had to put up with the Sussexes' departure to California which has made life so much more burdensome for her and William, with twice the workload, and twice the worry keeping the shaky old Firm afloat.

She has suffered in dignified silence the horrible things her once beloved brother-in-law Harry said about her in his book Spare, and Meghan's sly comments in her Oprah interview in 2021.

And more recently, she endured being named by Meghan’s mouthpiece Omid Scobie in his book as one of the alleged 'racist' royals who questioned the skin colour of her unborn son Archie.

She never complained, never explained, as she respects the Queen’s dictum of royal dignity. While we have learned a little of how the Sussexes’ slings and arrows have infuriated William, especially attacks on his beloved wife, there has been not a whisper from Kate. There is no ugly ‘Kate Camp’ who leak beastly stories. Yet how they must have hurt her.

Because no story about Kate and William passes without a nasty narrative being leaked by friends of Harry and Meghan. An unnamed member of ‘the Sussex camp’ reportedly piled in over the Photoshopped picture claiming: ‘This isn’t a mistake Meghan would ever make.’

A day afterwards, the Sussexes issued an official statement via a spokesman denying that a source close to the couple had made the comment.

Jolly good, but the damage was already done. And let’s not forget that, when it comes to touching up pictures, there are those air-brushed images of Harry and Meghan in glossy US magazines - one of which ludicrously gave follically challenged Harry a full head of ginger hair. The pair’s Time Magazine cover in 2021 was even ridiculed by one American expert for being ‘the most air-brushed photo I have ever seen.’

Does anyone seriously think a recovering Kate plotted to hoodwink the public by getting William to take a picture of the family in the back garden, so she could spend hours herself tweaking it to add in a scraggy tree, misalign the window sill and adjust the cuff on Charlotte’s cardigan?

It was a picture for Mothering Sunday, for crying out loud, a day when we should all be celebrating mums, rather than pouring bile on them because they might have made make mistakes trying to do the right thing.

Let’s all give Kate a break. Because if we don’t, she may very well take a break from us.