World braces as Princess set to disappear following health news
A day after the Princess of Wales revealed she has cancer, Kensington Palace is poised to try to pull off something wholly unprecedented.
Three, two, one … Someone start a timer because at some inevitable stage in the coming weeks some news outlet, somewhere, is going to wheel out the headline about Kate the Princess of Wales that simply reads, “Gone girl”.
If the first few months of this year saw the princess all but disappear off the public face of the Earth, then what lies ahead sounds like it will be nothing short of an all-out blackout.
(A Kate-out?)
The 42-year-old, according to new reporting, is about to try to pull off a vanishing act unlike anything we have ever seen before.
Today, 24 hours after Kate’s whammy of a video revealing that she has cancer and is undergoing preventive chemotherapy, this shocking news is still sinking in.
By now, we all know the broad strokes here – that in January, she went in for planned abdominal surgery, which was by all accounts a success, only for her doctors to discover that the princess also has an unspecified form of cancer.
(In a bit of irony that is far too cruel, this is precisely how her father-in-law, King Charles, discovered that he, too, is facing the big C.)
The timing of this bombshell reveal comes down to school holiday timetabling.
Multiple reports suggest that Kate and her husband, Prince William, wanted to go public with this at a time when their children would be on their Easter break so that they could protect them from the fallout.
However, on Sunday, another motivation for why we have just seen the Princess of Wales
make this remarkable, groundbreaking video has come to light, too.
A friend of Kate’s has told the Sunday Times’ Roya Nikkhah that part of the princess’s thinking in making the two-minute 15-second clip was to give her some breathing room and space in the coming months so that she can step foot outside the Windsor security cordon without setting off a social media firestorm.
As the friend explained: “She also wants to be able to carry on with as active and normal a routine as possible and not have it become a huge issue when she goes to a farm shop near their home in Windsor, with people then suggesting that’s a PR move.”
It was only last weekend (were we ever truly that young?) that a video of Kate and William popping out for some sourdough rye and a few pork and fennel songs (I’m guessing) hit the Internet, thus detonating 1001 more daft theories about the princess.
Social media’s armchair physicists and engineers, spurred on by the self-righteous belief that Kensington Palace was up to no good or trying to pull a fast one over the public’s eyes, spent days upon days analysing the 14-odd seconds of footage of the couple walking away with shopping bags like they were trying to prove the moon landing was faked.
(The real story here that no one has paid any attention to is why the Waleses were using plastic shopping bags. Where were their trusty monogrammed reusable totes from Smythson, hmm?)
All the princess did was pop out to the shops, and yet it set off an internet cataclysm that postmodern theorists will write monographs about for years to come.
Something had to be done to ensure that, spurred on by the witterings of iPhone-clutching fruitcakes, Kate was not going to be obsessively filmed or recorded if she went on with doing such a crazy thing as living her life.
That something, in part, was the video which it would seem that the Waleses’ hope will help reset things and restore some semblance of sanity after weeks of sheer madness.
The other something that has been put into motion here is that Kensington Palace’s hand-stitched kid gloves are about to come off when it comes to protecting the princess from the media.
According to The Times’ Assistant Editor Kate Mansey, the palace has made a direct “plea to the world’s media.”
Mansey reports: “It is understood that as part of her recovery the princess will continue to go about her daily life. The media has been asked not to photograph her as she does so, whether that be dropping the children off at school or attending appointments.”
The Palace has directly “asked media outlets not to participate in the market for information, images or video.”
Elsewhere, a friend of the Princess of Wales has told the Sunday Times, “Moving forwards, they will be very strict on enforcing their right to privacy.”
(Harbottle & Lewis, the go-to royal law firm, is currently probably restocking their printers with good, expensive stock and getting in plenty of new toner cartridges in readiness for sending out angry, official warnings in the near future.)
There is also a hope today that the mauling of Kate on social media over the course of this month could spur the major social media platforms into action.
Yesterday X, formerly Twitter, CEO Linda Yaccarino praised the princess’ “brave message”.
According to the Sunday Times, Yaccarino’s “intervention led to expressions of hope in Kensington Palace that social media companies may seek to stem the tide of unfounded stories about the couple. “
“For her to come out and say that gives us hope,” a source close to William and Kate said.
“This could be one piece of good news to come out of this. There is so much misinformation out there. She’s in a position to do something about it.”
What has been made clear is that in the coming weeks and months, as Kate undergoes chemotherapy and continues in her cancer fight, she has no intention of staying cloistered away or living the life of some sort of shut-in; she doesn’t expect to see her – anywhere.
If we have seen very little of Kate this year so far then prepare to be absolutely and utterly starved of any princess-y sightings or new photos in the coming months as a quiescent Fleet Street plays nice.
The unknown part of this new royal privacy strategy is social media.
Will the public similarly prove quiescent and willing to afford Kate privacy? Will the Wales family prove to be the beneficiaries of a certain British politesse and respect for the clear-cut dividing line between their public and private lives? Or will the lure of social media fame and possibly a huge payday override any sort of lingering feudal deference?
Sure, the British press might not be willing to run paparazzi photos of Kate and the Waleses, but can the same be said for the American or international press, which will have no qualms about riling up Crown Inc?
One would hope that good taste and respect will prevail here over base self-interest, but there is a reason they call it filthy lucre … As Team Wales tries to roll out this unprecedented, untried before, just-so-crazy-it-might-work blackout, what this really represents is a test: Self-enrichment versus acting ethically. Who will come out on top? Morals or moolah?
Here’s a sentiment I never thought I would express – It’s time for Kate to get gone and to be allowed to stay gone. Really, that’s the very least we can do for her.
Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience
working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.
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