The job of the writer, or blogger, or journalist is to try and make sense of the world in which we live and explain it to people who might be struggling for an explanation of the things they observe happening around them. Sometimes, those things can be easily enough explained, as was the case yesterday when I wrote for subscribers about opinion polling in the referendums held at the weekend, and why you should probably forgive the pollsters for getting it wrong.
Other times, though, I’m at a loss: As I am, I must confess, with the ongoing saga surrounding The Princess of Wales.
What is abundantly clear is that The Princess had surgery, and that said surgery was not a minor procedure. To put this in context, somebody I know has recently been told that they will undergo a triple heart bypass procedure, and that their recovery will be in the timeframe of three to six months. At the same time, Ferrari Formula One driver Carlos Sainz had emergency appendix surgery at the weekend and is expected to be cleared to drive his car – a massively challenging physical undertaking, given the G-forces involved – in time for the Australian Grand Prix twelve days from now.
The Princess has been out of action, by contrast, for much closer to three months. We can safely say, I think, that all was not well. Or at least, that all was not minor.
The other thing that is objectively true is that Kensington Palace has handled this situation very poorly indeed. The understandable desire for the future Queen to have her privacy and to recover in peace was always going to be transparently at odds with the insanity that The Royal Family appears to produce in Britons, and, to an even greater extent, Americans. It is also at odds with the celebrity culture and internet culture in which we live: The idea that one of the most photographed women on the planet can simply disappear for three months without wild conspiracy theories emerging would have struggled to pass muster in the era of Marilyn Monroe, let alone the era of TMZ.com.
Then, amidst all the insanity, the Palace and the media conspired to make it all worse: The release of a “doctored” photo is almost certainly a simple matter of vanity: We live in an era of filters and selfies and Instagram pages which contain little more than hundreds of posed photos of the perfect self. The old adage that the simplest explanation is usually the right explanation rings instinctively true to me here: A few hairs out of place in a photo isn’t really something the average fifth year student in Mountmellick can tolerate on social media, so it’s hardly a surprise that The Princess of Wales would be uncovered editing out a few baubles on her child’s jumper sleeve.
The basic problem is that there’s another old adage, or should be: The simplest explanation is almost always the most boring one, and we live in an era that fears boredom like a mouse should fear a conveniently positioned piece of cheese. It is far more interesting to imagine that The Princess of Wales has died and been replaced by a lookalike, or that she’s run off to Tahiti with the stableboy, than it is to accept that Royal Communications have simply made a mess of this.
There’s a telling contrast, as it happens, in her own family: Her father-in-law, The King, as we all know, has cancer. He announced this, and told the world. His trips for treatment are reported on, and his wife The Queen is seen visiting him in hospital. Even amidst his treatment, some photos and videos of him Kinging away almost as normal have been released. The wildest speculation you’ll find is that his cancer is more serious than they’re telling the public, but that’s boring as heck compared to the case of the missing and photoshopped Princess.
The Palace should have learned a very easy and straightforward lesson by now, one which, in this job, I try to live by every day: Nobody, ever, in the history of humankind, has spread a rumour that things are actually less bad or less dramatic than they are. Rumours always say that things are worse than you could possibly imagine, behind the scenes.
As somebody who dabbled in public relations in an earlier life, my advice to the Royals (which they shall surely not read) is simple: Whatever state the Princess is in, have her do a short video. Even if she’s missing half her face (as one rumourmonger suggested), hiding that fact won’t change it. The British and the Americans are united in their desire to love the Monarchy, and a brief appearance by the object of their obsession in this instance will bring this whole depressing circus to an end.
In the meantime, as to why so many people care about this, your correspondent remains as baffled as ever. It’s why I try to avoid writing about popular culture.