‘Similarities are obvious’: Queen Mary caught copying Princess Catherine
The Danish Queen has just released an Instagram video with a strange resemblance to something the Princess of Wales has been doing.
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There was a period of time in the early aughties when a regular gal just going about her business ordering a vodka lime and soda in a bar or trying to get herself a respectable university degree could easily nab an heir to a throne along the way.
For a few years there, we had real life Princess Diaries situations playing out in Norway, the Netherlands and of course Denmark and the UK. Call them the rom com royal years.
The two most famous are, of course, Denmark’s Queen Mary and Kate, the Princess of Wales, women united by their lustrous brunette locks and improbable origin stories – middle class gals who, thanks to twisty turny fate, have or will end up on thrones.
Now though, something odd has started happening – has Mary been caught copying Kate?
The answers lie over on Instagram, where the Danish palace has been rolling out a series of videos that call to mind something that the Princess of Wales has very much made her own.
It’s a trans North Sea bit of Insta-intrigue.
Recently, the Danish royal family’s official account shared a video of Mary visiting Grundtvig’s Church in Bispebjerg (try saying that after three laced eggnogs) for a festive singalong with some teenagers preparing for their confirmation.
And this very format – the strictly unnecessary, charming, quite personal, highly atmospheric and artistically and professionally shot social media video obviously designed to market royalty – is exactly what the Princess of Wales and husband Prince William have long pioneered.
This strategy, hawking royalty via a canny pivot towards video, is something that Kensington Palace has been quietly perfecting for years now.
William and Kate clearly clocked the full potential of social media to be able to powerfully craft their image for mass public consumption, and in a format they have complete control over.
The key thing in all of this is how all of the royal houses of Europe have started enthusiastically harnessing the power of social media for their own purposes.
Keeping a hereditary monarchy in situ requires constantly selling and reselling to people the idea that one family should enjoy extreme privilege for no other reason than the dint of their happy birth.
William and Kate have gotten very, very good at this and they have one person to thank – Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex.
If she and Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex (and let’s be honest here, really just Meghan) blazed the trail for royals-as-influencers, then William and Kate have smartly assumed that mantle.
After Le Grand Megxit happened in 2020, the Waleses stepped in to scoop up and hire the Sussexes’ social media whiz David Watkins, which saw their accounts get a much-needed upgrade.
The by-the-numbers rote posting of photos of them Doing Their Duty started to be augmented by evocative, more personal content and much better videos.
They could make themselves seem human and real and relatable while demonstrating their modern relevancy, and just what a spiffing job that ol’ hereditary monarchy caper was doing for the nation.
Should they wear jeans? Of course.
Then they went further still.
William and Kate started hiring professional filmmakers to make videos that no one had asked for and which were not tied to their official work, but were instead far more personal and intimate.
The first example of this came when their 10th wedding anniversary rolled around in 2021, putting out a video showing the Wales family romping and hugging on sand dunes and in their vast garden, the soft-focused piece set to a vibey guitar soundtrack.
It was entirely tactical – and incredibly successful.
So they went on, cranking out daily behind-the-scenes videos during King Charles’ coronation weekend that were so highly produced Netflix got jealous.
In December 2023, the Waleses put out a nearly two minute video showing Kate and their three children, Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis, visiting a baby bank. It was sweet, it was personal and it was, strictly speaking, totally unnecessary.
The family could have done this simply out of the goodness of their hearts and to issue a subtle lesson to their kids that Christmas is not all about overly stuffed stockings full of Nintendo Switches.
The fact they decided to film it and to package it up so smartly for the internet really tells you everything about this Wales shift – that they are intent on persuasively making the case for the monarchy by putting out what is really infotainment content.
And now? Our Mary and King Frederik are getting in on the act too.
Last week, the Queen released a video of her trying on a new tiara fashioned out of a diamond waist chain set to some nice piano music, a fitting that could have happened in private.
Now it’s #content. #Advertising.
Even more clear of an example are the Christmas advent videos that Mary and Frederik have been doing.
With this video of the Tasmanian-born royal visiting the church with all g’s in its name (don’t make me type it out again …) here, like William and Kate, we have royals basically being TV hosts.
Take Kate’s baby bank video from December last year and what Mary and Fred are doing now, and the similarities are obvious: Artfully-shot videos about outings that carry no official weight nor would they have necessarily undertaken except for the purpose of content-creating.
They even both use a similar crown logo at the end too.
Mary might have gotten to the throne first, but it’s Kate who has managed to claim the social media crown.
So far anyway.
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
Originally published as ‘Similarities are obvious’: Queen Mary caught copying Princess Catherine
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