The late Queen Elizabeth II used to say that the royal family has to be seen to be believed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That became glaringly evident as the absence of Kate, the Princess of Wales, from public view unleashed an escalating frenzy of wild speculation, skepticism and flat-out conspiracy theories<\/strong> fueled by online armchair detectives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s unlikely to let up even though Kate and husband Prince William have reportedly been filmed at a farm shop near their Windsor home \u2014 the first footage of the 42-year-old princess since she had abdominal surgery<\/strong> for an unspecified condition two months ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Sun newspaper plastered its front page with \u201cGreat to see you again, Kate!\u201d and said it had decided to publish the footage \u201cin a bid to bring an end to what the Palace has called the \u2018madness of social media.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n But that probably won\u2019t stem the tide of feverish and at times fantastical speculation that has swirled about the princess\u2019s condition during her absence. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe potency and legitimacy of monarchy comes from visibility,\u201d said Anna Whitelock, professor of history of the monarchy at London\u2019s City University. \u201cVisibility is the \u2018contract\u2019 between a monarch and their people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Evidence of that lies in the steady stream of photos of King Charles III<\/strong> meeting dignitaries and officials released by the palace since the monarch announced in February that he is being treated for an unspecified form of cancer. Charles\u2019 relative openness about his diagnosis was a departure for the generally secretive royal family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kate has not been as open, or as successful, at controlling the narrative. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Palace officials gave little detail about Kate\u2019s condition beyond saying that it wasn\u2019t cancer-related, the surgery was successful and recuperation will keep Kate away from public duties until after Easter. That\u2019s likely to mean she\u2019ll be out of sight until her children go back to school on April 17.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Experts who study conspiracy theories say the snowballing conjecture surrounding Kate isn\u2019t so different from how dozens of other \u201cnonstandard beliefs\u201d gain momentum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe moment there\u2019s an information gap, people will fill it. And they can fill that space quite quickly … when we have such a fast-moving mediascape,\u201d said Simeon Yates, a professor of digital culture at the University of Liverpool. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Speculation didn\u2019t stop after William and Kate\u2019s Kensington Palace office released a photo of Kate and her children George, Charlotte and Louis on March 10 to coincide with Mother\u2019s Day in the U.K. The move backfired when The Associated Press<\/strong> and other news agencies retracted the picture from publication because it appeared to have been manipulated, fueling even more conjecture. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Although there was no suggestion the image was fake, inconsistencies such as the alignment of Princess Charlotte\u2019s left hand with the sleeve of her sweater suggested it had been altered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kate issued a statement<\/strong> acknowledging she liked to \u201cexperiment with editing\u201d and apologizing for \u201cany confusion\u201d the photo had caused.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The manipulated photo set off a new round of speculation, some of it centered on unsubstantiated theories that the image wasn\u2019t recent or that Kate had been photoshopped in \u2014 alongside even more bizarre claims.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The palace and the British government have tried to ignore the conjecture but occasionally have had to respond. The British Embassy in Kyiv released a statement saying Monday \u201cnews about King Charles III death is fake,\u201d after Russian outlets falsely reported the monarch\u2019s demise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The video clip published by The Sun late Monday appears to show William and Kate smiling as they walked together, carrying shopping bags. It said the footage was taken Saturday in Windsor, west of London.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Sun quoted Nelson Silva, who said he filmed the video, as saying, \u201cKate looked happy and relaxed. They look happy just to be able to go to a shop and mingle.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kensington Palace did not comment on the video.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yates said that \u201cKategate\u201d resonates because so many people in the U.K., the United States and around the world feel emotionally invested in the royal family \u2014 an institution that\u2019s both public and secretive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThere\u2019s quite an emotional thrill of thinking, \u2018I know there\u2019s a secret going on,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s an enjoyment in thinking, well you know, \u2018I know something special.\u2019 It makes you feel better.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Daniel Allington, who studies conspiracy theories at King\u2019s College London, agreed that the Kate speculation has its roots in people\u2019s emotional connection to the British royal family. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBecause of that, they want to talk about them, they want to know about them, and when there is very little known, people end up speculating. They are trying to make something out of nothing,\u201d Allington said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He also predicted that quieting the international frenzy won\u2019t be a simple task.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOnce people start doubting, they can doubt practically everything. Once people start going on that track of speculation about the truth being hidden, it\u2019s very difficult to get them off that track,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The late Queen Elizabeth II used to say that the royal family has to be seen to be believed. That became glaringly evident as the absence of Kate, the Princess of Wales, from public view unleashed an escalating frenzy of wild speculation, skepticism and flat-out conspiracy theories fueled by online armchair detectives. It\u2019s unlikely to let up […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":41900,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[5268,731,770,1221,287,9331,8032,6578,3513,7234,8205,11538,5756,6901,6060,7298,5455,9127,746,2264,10954,3040,11071,2817,7874,7881,5342,5423,197,3684,9833,1249,5316,6332,2822,2815,10313,3927,8133,5217,6736,5349,5470,5374,9210,6272,146,9262,214,8033,1254,5436,36,594],"class_list":["post-41899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news","tag-british","tag-british-government","tag-british-royal-family","tag-cancer","tag-children","tag-city","tag-conspiracy","tag-conspiracy-theories","tag-culture","tag-death","tag-diagnosis","tag-digital","tag-easter","tag-elizabeth-ii","tag-embassy","tag-fake","tag-family","tag-february","tag-feel","tag-government","tag-international","tag-kate","tag-kategate","tag-kensington-palace","tag-king-charles","tag-king-charles-iii","tag-kyiv","tag-lies","tag-liverpool","tag-london","tag-meeting","tag-monarch","tag-monarchy","tag-online","tag-prince-william","tag-princess-of-wales","tag-professor","tag-queen","tag-royal-family","tag-russian","tag-school","tag-social-media","tag-space","tag-sun","tag-surgery","tag-the-monarchy","tag-truth","tag-united-states","tag-university","tag-video","tag-wales","tag-windsor","tag-world","tag-who"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41899"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41899\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41901,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41899\/revisions\/41901"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}