Simone Reddington

For the last few weeks, most of the news headlines and discourse on social media has been speculation on the whereabouts and well-being of the Princess of Wales, until she announced on Friday evening that she is being treated for cancer.  As a non-Royalist, I cannot imagine how difficult this must be for her and her family and wish the Princess a swift recovery.  Like many other people, I will admit that I fell down the online conspiracy theory rabbit-hole which, with now appear in hind-sight to be very bad taste.  Indeed, many tabloid newspapers (who also printed articles that speculated on Kate’s whereabouts) have referred to these theories this weekend as the work of online trolls.  However, gossip is part of human nature and I would argue that it does not always come from malice, but simply curiosity. 

Obviously, as a woman, Kate has as a right to privacy around her health, and informing the rest of the country of her diagnosis is probably the last thing on her priorities.  However, her role within the public eye means that she is not like other women as the family that she has married into is completely funded by the British taxpayers and are therefore held accountable to public interest.  Personally, I find the concept of a ruling class to be extremely old-fashioned and think that the Royal Family should be defunded, but there are still plenty of people who take a keen interest in them.  These are the people who expect Royal women such as Kate to smile and pose with their babies in front of paparazzi from around the world just days after giving birth, which is arguably a lot more intrusive than criticising the recent PR strategies employed by one of the oldest and well-known institutions in the world. 

Some of the darker conspiracy theories around the Princess concerned rumours around her marriage and while there is there are no evidence to support them, the strange PR strategies employed by Kensington Palace didn’t exactly help squash them. In today’s social media age, people are more clued up about the image that celebrities and politicians want to project and seeing an innocent-looking family photo that had been digitally enhanced was bound to raise a few eyebrows.  And let’s face it, the Royals don’t have the best track record for its treatment of women who have married into the family , as both the late Princess Diana and, more recently, the Duchess of Suffolk have shared their negative experiences and the impact it had upon their mental health.  

As the world allows the Princess of Kate to concentrate on getting better, and the media will soon move onto the next high-profile scandal, it is important to remember than people in the public eye are still human beings and everyone is entitled to a right to privacy around their health.  However, when some people generate more public interest than others, that privacy does unfortunately become very difficult to regulate and maintain.