The British royal family filed suit yesterday against a magazine in France that published topless pictures of Kate Middleton, calling the surreptitiously snapped photos of Prince William’s wife a “grotesque” invasion of her privacy.
The blurry photos — which ran in the magazine Closer and show the Duchess of Cambridge lounging in a bikini bottom while on vacation with her hubby in the South of France — are believed to have been taken by a paparazzo from more than half a mile away.
They enraged William, whose mother, Princess Diana, was killed in a car crash while being chased by paparazzi in Paris, and the royals made it clear they would not allow Kate to be treated the way Diana was.
“The incident is reminiscent of the worst excesses of the press and paparazzi during the life of Diana, Princess of Wales, and all the more upsetting to the duke and duchess for being so,” a St. James’s Palace official in London said in a statement.
The office said the glamorous couple “have been hugely saddened to learn that a French publication and a photographer have invaded their privacy in such a grotesque and totally unjustifiable manner.”
“Their Royal Highnesses had every expectation of privacy in the remote house. It is unthinkable that anyone should take such photographs, let alone publish them.”
Laurence Pieau, the editor of Closer, said there was an “overreaction” to the “beautiful series” of pictures.
“What we see is a young couple, who just got married, who are very much in love, who are splendid,” she told BFM television.
As for the more revealing pictures of Kate, she said, “It’s a young woman who is topless, the same as you can see on any beach in France or around the world.”
But while she insisted the photos weren’t scandalous, her own magazine said otherwise.
Sensational captions surround images of a topless Kate sitting on a lounge chair and a dozen photos of the prince rubbing sun-tan lotion on his wife’s back as she partly peels down her bikini bottom.
“OMG!” says one.
“The last time we saw Kate and William on a balcony it was for their wedding. But they had more clothes on,” reads another.
Another says, “People always say she doesn’t need to dress up to look good. Well . . . Kate is proving this.”
It also referred to a recent scandal involving William’s brother, Harry, who was photographed in the buff while partying in a Las Vegas hotel room.
“Harry started the fashion: These days the Windsors take their clothes off,” the caption said.
Wills and Kate, meanwhile, kept their chins up on their Southeast Asian tour. They wrapped up their time in Malaysia yesterday and were heading to the Solomon Islands.
The racy shots seemed to be setting the stage for an international incident.
The gossip rag is published by Mondadori, an Italian company partly owned by disgraced former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. It’s chaired by his daughter Marina.
Another Mondadori publication, the Italian magazine Chi, said it would devote 26 pages to the topless pics in an edition coming out Monday.
That’s the day a hearing is scheduled in the royals’ action against Closer.
Legal experts said they expect the legal action to be successful, but also somewhat fruitless, because the magazine’s profits would likely be far greater than any fines.
Pieau maintained they did not invade their privacy.
“This terrace looked out on a public road and they were visible from the road. So they were not particularly trying to hide themselves,” she said — not mentioning that road was a distance of 10 city blocks away.
With Isabel Vincent and Post Wires