bits and bants vol.30
no one takes Princess Kate more seriously than me
If you happen to follow me on instagram you will most assuredly know that I’m a big royals fan. And not just a Princess Kate fan, although we’re definitely meant to be bffs, but a true royals fan. Both my grandmothers loved the royal family and loved buying tabloids, and the 1990s were peak tabloid culture that I loved to soak in whenever I visited them. My grandmother on my father’s side was born in Canada to English parents and her love and pride in the royal family remained into her 90s. She always had opinions, and was always up for a royals chat. Since then I’ve followed with different levels of interest, but in the last ten years or so the quality and ability to follow knowledgable royal accounts online has made me fall pretty deep into the rabbit hole.
I say all this to describe that I am very invested in royals news to the point that I get the daily royal rota showing up in my instagram feed. This makes a lot of difference when it comes to understanding royal news because one becomes accustomed to what is normal for the official publicity arm of the Palace, the royals themselves, and what the British press expect from them.
Knowing what I know just makes this insanity of rumours and speculation surrounding Princess Kate so maddening. To see wild speculation be treated as fact, a basic and total disregard of the facts we do actually have sweep through social media, traditional media, and the minds of people who fully accept said gossip as truth, is a very valuable lesson in how public opinion is shaped and how toxic and untrustworthy our sources of information can be.
The Palace released their initial statement about Princess Catherine’s surgery the day it was performed and stated that she would not be working in the public until after Easter. The royals have huge resources which enable them to travel between palaces and country estates easily and undetected, there is not daily paparazzi outside their doors watching their every move, contrary to what Americans seem to think. Someone who has these resources can and should be able to convalesce outside the public eye without having photos taken of them fairly easily for a couple months. It is not unusual for the royals to take a month off in the summer, where there are no public engagements and for there to be no royal press coverage. The ridiculous idea of a “missing princess” just seem so silly and groundless to me. Why is it weird to believe someone having serious surgery would not want to be in the public eye for a while?
Has the Palace handled this entire thing poorly? Yes. But does the public have the right to daily photos of Princess Kate everyday while she recuperates? No, of course not. It also doesn’t mean that the absence of these pictures means she’s obviously dead and the Palace is covering up! A coverup of that kind of magnitude would take so many people, be so unsustainable, that it wouldn’t last a day let alone months. And what benefit would it be to the Palace or royal family to perpetuate such a rouse? That’s the only way the monarchy would survive is if they cover up the Princess of Wales being in a coma?! Not even Meghan has these kinds of wild fantasies. The Princess of Wales is not a direct heir to the throne. She’s married to the heir, and mother to the next in line, but her health is not of dire importance to the existence of the monarchy itself. I think even if the Wales’ were having marital issues that the opposite would be occurring in the public eye; we’d see everything as normal as possible so as not to raise suspicion, we wouldn’t see a public relations disaster as a coverup strategy. I also think that Princess Kate’s public behaviour prior to Christmas had nothing in it to indicate she was unhappy, uncomfortable, or feeling undue pressure in her public duties or her marriage. I think we’ve see Kate act uncomfortably in public before, she was very nervous at the beginning of her marriage in public situations, and the events she was present with Meghan had an obvious discomfort in her body language. Kate is not a great actress, I think if there was any credence to her having tons of personal issues we would have seen other evidence by now.
Now we have the photoshop fiasco. Firstly, I think it ridiculous that this photo was so scrutinized and censured in the current atmosphere of filtered, adulterated, and edited photos that we live and breathe in. Every photo you see anywhere has been edited or photoshopped to some degree. For the news agencies to issue a kill notice is, I think, outright vengeance for Princess Kate giving them nothing and robbing them of two months worth of profit. If that photo had been one of 25 of Princess Kate routinely working at public engagements over the course of last week we never would be talking about it.
Now, maybe the Princess edited it poorly herself. Maybe they told someone in their offices to edit it, smooth out the rough edges, make her face look less puffy, get the kids all smiling in one picture. Maybe Prince William wanted a sign of life to throw out to the world in the insanity. Obviously, it was done without the forethought that it would be one of the most scrutinized photos of all time because the internet thinks Kate’s dead or in a dungeon. But it does not provide evidence that there is a malicious conspiracy hiding Kate, or covering up her death, or whatever other weirdo idea is floating around.
I could go on answering the conspiracy theories by stating the facts we actually have for hours, but I won’t continue to bore you. I love theories, I love looking into weird things, I have zero trust left in institutions! But nothing in this situation has any credible evidence to point to anything other than what the Palace has said publicly. I obviously don’t know intimate details or the status of their marriage, but I do believe Princess Kate was, and probably still is seriously ill, and that it will recover significant recovery time. The simplest answer is usually the true one, and usually conspiracy theories are true when the public statements made don’t pass the initial common sense test, but so far I think all the public statements from the Palace do.
Now maybe everyone is just having fun with this story and going to town. Which is fine, because it really is tabloid fodder. But what I’ve seen that I find concerning and ridiculous is that so many people from either mainstream media or people who have social media accounts are treating these theories as absolute fact. In the 90s we didn’t give credence to tabloid headlines until concrete evidence was presented, and even still mainstream media would rarely condescend to cover it. But now there is no line between what is gossip and rumour and what is presented as news. And in a world where the news media is already deeply untrustworthy this kind of line crossing is really detrimental to people consuming news. I think that the majority of people who are consuming this story are just reading the headlines then repeating the drama quite innocently. But I see it as indicative of how we now read and treat news now. We only go headline deep without investigating what has actually been said and done.
I’ve learned over the past four years that journalism today is a very corrupted field. Not only is there accepted narrative that is just repeated ad nauseam, but the further you dig the more you see that journalists themselves aren’t asking the necessary questions or thinking about things properly. You really have to be knowledgable about a subject to be able to properly judge if a story is being accurately reported on. Now, I don’t have loads of free time, so I can only safely say that there are probably three areas that I feel confident in to judge whether or not something is being reported accurately and that is probably church news, the Canadian political situation, and royal family news. I feel confident in these areas because I know where to go for primary sources, I know which reporters think reasonably and knowledgeably when covering these issues, and I stay up to date on them. But that leaves an entire world of news and issues that I don’t feel I have the ability to comment publicly on even though I may have fairly well formed opinions. I really think this is the case for most normal people, but how many of us are posting about these issues without even reading the other side, let alone primary sources or reporting?
Now, I hope I’ve squashed all the Princess Kate fun you’ve been having!
bits:
Here’s a proper breakdown of the facts we have regarding the Kate situation that I shared earlier this week from a source I trust regarding royal family watching. And I’ll say it again: I don’t care what kind of feelings you have, or what you think may be happening, I just want you to know what is actually fact.
Get into the St. Patrick’s Day spirit by listening to this delightful episode from
on the magic of Irish folklore and tradition!- about women working on farms and Adam Bede by George Eliot.
reading, watching, what have you:
guys, I’m going to finish listening to A Severe Mercy for book club on my way to book club tonight, I’m a real overachiever.
Started the very good new biography about Willa Cather this week, Chasing Bright Medusas by Benjamin Taylor.
Still watching Clarkson’s Farm and dying laughing. It’s obviously funnier if you’ve ever lived or worked on a farm. And in a fit of comfort watching, I started the newest season of Somebody Feed Phil, which is still exactly what you want when you want to watch Somebody Feed Phil. Although, probably a bit more difficult to watch during lent!
And I would love for you to come to Ireland withKatie Marquetteand I this coming October! It’s going to be an amazing experience of the culture, faith, and beauty of Ireland.
Here is the brochure for all the details.
Ok, that’s it for me unless Kate news breaks. Let’s hope for my sanity it does not.
eating sourdough to cope,
Christy
Curious to hear your thoughts on A Severe Mercy if you get around to sharing. I loved the CS Lewis bits but am perplexed by the hype about the love story. I found so much of Van & Davy’s relationship (as he wrote it) really troubling.
I just put my bookmark into Chasing Bright Medusas after finishing a book last night, twins!!!