Prince William and Catherine, the duchess of Cambridge, will file a
criminal complaint against the photographer who took topless pictures of
her, the palace said Sunday evening.
The complaint will be given to a French prosecutor on Monday, Britain's Press Association reported.
Earlier, the palace said Britain's royal family will go to court Monday to stop the publication of more topless photos.
Lawyers for the royals
will be seeking damages and a Paris court order preventing the photos
from being published again. They also want existing photos taken
offline, the palace spokesman told CNN.
The French magazine Closer ran photos last week of Catherine
sunbathing topless in private.
Chi, an Italian gossip
magazine owned by the same company, has said it will put out a special
edition on Monday with photos of William and Catherine on vacation.
The royal couple is not
pursuing legal action in other countries currently, the palace spokesman
said, although the photos have also been published in Ireland.
The palace expressed
outrage last week that the French magazine published the pictures,
comparing the invasion of privacy to those suffered by William's late
mother, Diana, princess of Wales.
William and Catherine
were said to be "hugely saddened" by what palace officials called a
"grotesque" invasion of privacy while they were on a private vacation.
But the Irish Daily Star went on to print the pictures on Saturday.
Palace officials slammed the newspaper's decision as driven only by greed.
But editor Mike O'Kane
told the BBC that outrage over the images was only felt in Britain and
that readers in the Republic of Ireland wanted to know what all the
"kerfuffle" was about.
He was "a little taken
aback by the reaction in the UK," he said, saying the newspaper was
treating Catherine no differently from any other celebrity.
"She's not the future
queen of Ireland so really the only place this is causing fury seems to
be in the UK," he said, suggesting that the British press were behaving
with some hypocrisy.
O'Kane said the Irish
Daily Star was reproducing the images as published in Closer on Friday
rather than buying them directly. The pictures are not being published
in the Northern Ireland edition.
Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom.
The latest controversy
comes only three weeks after the British royal family was caught up in a
media furor over images of William's younger brother, Prince Harry,
partying naked in his Las Vegas hotel room with a group of girls.
In a sign of how
divisive the issue of royal privacy has become, a co-owner of the Irish
Daily Star, media group Northern & Shell, said it in no way backed
the newspaper's decision to run the pictures of Catherine.
In a statement, the
company -- which runs the Irish Daily Star in a joint venture with
Independent News & Media, but does not exert editorial control over
it -- said it was "profoundly dismayed" by the move.
"We abhor the decision
of the Irish Daily Star to publish these intrusive pictures of the Duke
and Duchess of Cambridge, which we, like St James's Palace, believe to
be a grotesque invasion of their privacy," Northern & Shell's
communications director Mimi Turner said.
Northern & Shell
also owns the Daily Express and the Daily Star, among other British
publications, which have not run the pictures of Catherine, nor of
Prince Harry.
William, who is second in line to the throne, and his wife are on an official tour of southeast Asian nations.
They were due in the
Solomon Islands Sunday on the next leg of a tour that has been
overshadowed by the furor over the photographs.
Catherine was "upset" with Closer magazine, a palace source told CNN.
Mondadori told CNN it
plans to run 26 pages of photographs of William and Kate on vacation in
an "extraordinary" special edition to go on sale in Italy on Monday.
Chi's front cover will
also feature three revealing pictures of Catherine, according to a copy
of the page and statement sent by Mondadori spokeswoman Carmen Mugione
via e-mail.
"It is a story worth
publishing in an extraordinary edition because it shows in a natural
light the everyday life of a very famous contemporary young couple in
love," Chi's editor-in-chief, Alfonso Signorini, is quoted as saying in
the statement.
"The fact that they
happen to be the future king and queen of England certainly makes it
more interesting and current, and in line with today's concept of
monarchy."
A St. James's Palace
spokeswoman said: "Any such publication would serve no purpose other
than to cause further, entirely unjustifiable upset to the Duke and
Duchess of Cambridge, who were enjoying time alone together in the
privacy of a relative's home."
According to Mondadori's
website, Closer has an average weekly circulation of about 414,000,
while Chi sells more than 340,000 copies a week. Marina Berlusconi,
daughter of former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, has been
chairwoman of the media group since 2003.
Legal analysts suggest
the company hopes to recoup any legal costs and fines it may incur by
increasing sales, thanks to the revealing pictures.
The grainy pictures
published by Closer in France appear to have been taken with a long
camera lens while the couple was staying at a private chateau belonging
to William's uncle in Provence, in southern France.
The new privacy
controversies have dredged up the royal family's often rocky
relationship with the press and put a spotlight on how the palace deals
with the media after the tragic death of Diana, as she fled
photographers in Paris 15 years ago.
Laurence Pieau,
editor-in-chief of Closer in France, defended the decision to publish
the images in an interview with CNN affiliate BFM-TV, saying: "We were
just doing our job."
Pieau said that there
had been no debate at the magazine over whether to publish the photos,
and that they show the royals "are just like any other couple in love."
On Saturday the management of Closer said the photos "are in no case degrading."
French law provides for
"draconian sanctions" to protect against this kind of behavior, Briitsh
lawyer Charlotte Harris said, including orders to take magazines off
shelves and the imposition of serious fines.
But even if distribution
of the images is contained to a degree, Harris said, the damage is done
to the extent that very private information about the duchess has now
become public knowledge.
No UK newspaper has so far published the photographs of Catherine.
The British media is
currently under close scrutiny after revelations of phone hacking and
other abuses. The conclusions of an independent judge-led inquiry, which
may recommend greater restrictions on media freedoms, are expected by
the end of the year.
Culled: CNN
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