Viral Kate Middleton video exposes dangerous power play
The Prince and Princess of Wales have launched a pretty extraordinary campaign, leaving King Charles in their wake.
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On a cloudy spring morning in 2011, two totally unconnected things collided to world-shaking effect. The first was Facebook, at that time still a state-of-the-art social media powerhouse. The second was Pippa Middleton’s bottom.
Ka-BOOM.
Somewhere in the 20 or so metres between the road and the entrance to Westminster Abbey, these forces combined and set off an immediate cultural chain reaction, a sort of nuclear fission for the celebrity age. Thanks to Facebook, still a novelty and not yet the means by which a hostile foreign power tried to stick a few liver-spotted fingers into a US election, and before Prince William and his longtime squeeze Kate Middleton had even said ‘I do’, Pippa’s derrière had gone global.
It was the first great royal social media moment.
So here’s today’s group assignment: Over the coronation weekend, did we just witness another one?
In the 12 years since the Bottom That Was Heard Around The World, the British royal family has become as adept at using social media as Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York has at evading bankruptcy proceedings. They are on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram – and I bet if most Western governments weren’t currently giving TikTok nervous sidelong glances and muttering about the CCP, they would be on there too. (Prince Louis? Truly made for a TikTok challenge.)
Ever since Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex departed for California and took all their motivational quotes and hurt feelings with them, the reigning royal champs of the hashtag have been William and Kate, the Prince and Princess of Wales. (Thanks, in a very large part, to them having kept on David Watkins, the Sussexes’ former digital communications lead.)
For years now, every Wales outing, from opening a well-intentioned potting shed to a state dinner, has had the social media treatment, these work-related updates interspersed with plenty of heartwarming pics that drive the ‘happy, normal family’ line home with all the subtlety of a solid gold partridge fork to the eye.
Baking cakes for the local community in Cardiff to enjoy at a Platinum Jubilee street party taking place today! 🎉
— The Prince and Princess of Wales (@KensingtonRoyal) June 5, 2022
We hope you like them! 🧠pic.twitter.com/lK9QkaGugB
But over the coronation weekend, something shifted. Only hours after the event had begun and right about the time Queen Camilla had started to wonder if someone had remembered to tape The Archers, the Wales’ Instagram and Twitter accounts had pumped out a video.
No normal, edited on an iPhone video mind you, but a high-sheen, high-gloss, exquisitely professional trailer full of behind-the-scenes moments that had all the pacing, build-up and atmosphere of a Michael Bay trailer. In the week since, it has been viewed more than 21 million times.
The following day, out came a similarly slick video of William practising his speech for the coronation concert, which had so much build-up it seemed more like he was about to play the Pyramid stage at Glastonbury, rather than give a booze-less toast to his 74-year-old dad.
Then that night, after it was over, even before star performer Lionel Richie had packed away his favourite microphone, hashtag HQ back at Kensington Palace had produced another video that framed the whole event as being the big wonderful Wales show.
King who? Queen what?
On Monday, the final day of coronation activities, la famille Wales, including their three kids, joined the Big Help Out and we got, wouldn’t you know, another video, this time of them helping do something to a scout hall. Louis in a digger? Tiny princes making smores? This was more Netflix production than something cobbled together by their only aide with a MacBook Pro.
They all have the pacing, tension and production values of a Hollywood creation. (Sadly, it’s something the brothers Wales will never bond over, warm lager in hand as they sit in the garden of Adelaide Cottage and listen to Prince Andrew, just down the road, disconsolately hitting golf balls into protected woodland.)
More importantly, together these videos have been viewed more than 67 million times across Twitter and Instagram, and the Wales’ social media campaign over the coronation has thoroughly trounced that of Buckingham Palace, leaving them totally and utterly in the dust.
Meanwhile, as all of this was going on, the official royal family accounts were putting out content that looked like Princess Anne had made it using her trusty iPhone 4. (Her ringtone? Crazy Frog.)
What’s crucial here is not just what the William and Kate videos show but what they don’t. They are a self-promoting marketing effort that are so blatant yet effective they should be studied by science. The tactic here would seem to have more in common with communist state propaganda than anything Queen Mary would recognise as royal.
They keep trying to present themselves as if they are the happy, happy-clappy version of royalty to King Charles and Queen Camilla’s High Church severity.
You’ve got to give William and Kate points for managing to part ways with any semblance of shame for being so transparent here.
Then there is what is missing, namely one Charles Philip Arthur George, the only anointed king to have ever gone on a spiritual quest or wasted his time learning to windsurf. (Though maybe George II might have been up for a bit of chanting and waving an incense stick around.) Aside from a few shots of His Majesty doing some waving from the Buckingham Palace balcony, he is entirely missing from the Wales’ cinematic universe.
This muscular Wales effort to sell, sell, sell themselves over the coronation even though it was the King’s big day looks and smells suspiciously like a power play worthy of the Russian Duma.
The ‘why’ here is understandable: It’s imperative that William and Kate are built up and their star is polished as energetically as possible given they are the monarchy’s One Great Hope. The future of the whole outfit rests on them being crowned and proving so popular that the institution surges into the 22nd century on a wave of popularity not seen since the Restoration.
But what about the 20 years or so until this all officially begins?
William now enters the strange no man’s land of being the Prince of Wales, the second grandest title in the United Kingdom and one that comes with no job description aside from staying alive. In the late 1970s, just before he turned 30, Charles gave a speech saying: “My great problem in life is that I do not really know what my role in life is. Somehow I must find one.”
Which is what William and Kate seem to be doing right now – carving out roles for themselves as a sort of alternative, not-quite-king-and-queen-yet-but-nearly kinda thing. What these videos seem to be tacitly suggesting to audiences is that if they can put up with Charles occasionally yelling at pens, then just around the corner are the superstars William and Kate.
What these coronation videos also suggest is that William and Kate are not content to patiently wait and play the docile understudies for the next couple of decades, but are looking to build up their own power base.
However, this digital land grab by William and Kate comes with plenty of risk, most obviously thoroughly aggravating Charles and fracturing the buddy-buddy relationship between father and son that has evolved since Megxit. (Camilla? I always get the feeling she just wants to do her job and then hurry home for a tray on her lap in her slippers.)
And the King now faces the danger of becoming a caretaker monarch; a throne-warmer until his much more widely liked son gets his turn to do a bit of ruling.
Here’s one last thought: As Charles entered Westminster Abbey for his coronation, sitting only a few rows beyond the royal family was Pippa Middleton; the woman who once owned the world’s most famous bottom.
The press didn’t really pay her much attention. A hell of a lot can change in only a decade or so.
Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.
Originally published as Viral Kate Middleton video exposes dangerous power play
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