While it’s never quiet in the House of Windsor, it is undeniable that over the past few weeks, the British monarchy has suffered from a public relations crisis. You have a king with cancer — type unknown, seriousness unknown — who has stepped back in order to undergo treatment for an unspecified amount of time. Nearly one month before this was announced, it was declared that the princess of Wales had undergone successful “planned abdominal surgery” and would not be making any public appearances until at least after Easter.
Since then, the internet has run wild with Kate conspiracies. Is she recovering from a Brazilian butt lift? Is she divorcing her husband? Is she suffering from a terrible eating disorder, or had she been dispatched altogether and replaced with a body double?
Kensington Palace, in a rare intervention, tried to get in front of the rumors by announcing that “the Princess of Wales is still doing well” and that “we are not making any further comments.” This was accompanied a few days later by a grainy paparazzi picture of Kate in the car with her mother, Carole Middleton. If the picture was leaked by the royals themselves, I bet they wish they hadn’t bothered after it created even more concern.
“A fake or body double,” crazed royal watchers posted when the paparazzi picture was published. “Kate Middleton has a mole above her lip, right below the apple of her cheek.” It’s elementary, my dear Watson!
That’s two down, but don’t worry. The royal family and their infinite staff and advisers have prepared for situations like this. There’s Prince Harry and the Duchess of Sussex. The first one very helpfully flew back upon the news of his father’s cancer diagnosis and decided to help out the family by organizing an interview with Good Morning America to talk about how much he loves his father.
“I jumped on a plane and went to go see him as soon as I could,” he said. “Look, I love my family. The fact that I was able to get on a plane and go and see him and spend any time with him, I’m grateful for that.” Meghan is probably in the midst of writing her tell-all about the nasty, racist king.
Amid all of this turmoil, at least King Charles’s wife, Queen Camilla, proved that she could step up — for just a few weeks. After she took over her husband’s duties for 13 days, it was announced that she was so exhausted that she would be jetting off on a sunny holiday to reboot. She is “absolutely shattered and exhausted,” friends of the queen told the Daily Beast. One has to ask why Buckingham Palace thought it was a good idea to announce her private, luxury getaway. It’s likely that nobody would even notice her absence for one week.
Thankfully, Prince William has been holding the fort while the family’s crisis continues. Last week, after a two-day break, he attended a synagogue in London where he sat down with ambassadors from the Holocaust Educational Trust and heard from young people about how they’ve been affected by antisemitism. Royal watchers were worried before William’s public appearance, as he canceled his previous one due to a personal matter, which ended up being the apparent suicide of his cousin, 45-year-old Thomas Kingston.
You may think that things can’t really get worse for the family, but Monday night, the Princess of Wales’s uncle, Gary Goldsmith, entered the Celebrity Big Brother house to take part in the reality TV program. Will he cut his family some slack and keep his mouth shut?
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That looks doubtful after he introduced himself as the “uncle to the future Queen of our country, Catherine Middleton, the current Princess of Wales” and said in an exclusive interview with the Sun that he “got so upset with Harry and Meghan because you don’t put a stick into that spoke and reinvent history,” adding, “I’ve got pretty miffed when they had a pop at my beautiful niece who couldn’t say anything for herself.”
While usually these PR crises have a way of sorting themselves out, the British monarchy’s luck looks as if it’s only getting worse.
Kara Kennedy is a freelance writer living in Washington, D.C.