The Royals tried to control their image online. The internet had other ideas.

Trace the digitally altered photo of Catherine, Princess of Wales, and its roots lie in a tragedy of another Princess of Wales, Diana, whose death in 1997 predated the creation of Facebook by almost seven years.

Diana’s fatal car crash, after a high-speed chase by photographers in Paris, left a lasting impression on her sons, William and Harry. They grew up vowing not to participate in what they saw as a pathological relationship between the royal family and the press, in which they were the abused partners.

The rise of social media gave this younger generation of royals a way to bypass the tabloids they vilified, with popular platforms like Instagram and Twitter where they could post carefully curated news and images of themselves, without the intervention of London’s newspapers or the public. the lurking paparazzi.

But now they experience the dark side of public life in the wild west of the internet. Catherine’s photo, posted on social media and picked up by newspapers and broadcasters around the world, has been swept up in the maelstrom of rumors and conspiracy theories that have dogged her since she underwent abdominal surgery and disappeared from the public eye two months ago.

While William and Harry have struggled with these forces, the pressure has perhaps been most acute on their wives, Catherine and Meghan, who have taken turns at the eye of an online storm. Meghan recently spoke out about the “hateful” treatment she experienced while pregnant with her children.

“It must be so hard to deal with this,” said Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, director of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford. “It is often women who suffer the worst bullying and intimidation.”

Of course, Catherine unintentionally contributed to the hothouse atmosphere by changing the Mother’s Day photo of herself and her three children. That unleashed a new storm of online speculation, with people sharing their favorite theories about how the image had been manipulated, whether it was by transferring Catherine’s head from a 2016 cover photo in Vogue magazine or using a photo of the family from last year. November to recycle.

Visual researchers debunked both suggestions, but that didn’t stop the original posts from going viral, with one post promoting the Vogue theory racking up more than 45 million views.

Catherine has tried to take control of her image and now finds herself in a predicament similar to some of her royal ancestors, pursued by an online pack no less wild than the photographers who hounded Diana in Paris.

“Anyone in the royal family or their staff who thinks social media allows people to bypass gatekeepers or control the narrative has not been paying attention to Meghan Markle’s experience,” Professor Nielsen said.

“These are very ambiguous spaces,” he said, “where things that people want are inextricably linked to things that are deeply disturbing.”

William and Harry made their first foray into social media in 2015 when, along with Catherine, they opened Twitter and Instagram accounts. A early post showed Harrystanding on tiptoe, next to the more than two-meter-tall retired American basketball star Dikembe Mutombo, during a coaching program for youth.

When Harry met Meghan, an American actress, the following year, he was exposed to an avid and knowledgeable social media user. Meghan ran a lifestyle blog, The Tig, which she described as “a hub for the discerning palate.” Cosmopolitan magazine once said it was “on track to become the next Goop,” actress Gwyneth Paltrow’s wellness brand.

Meghan shut down The Tig after her romance with Harry became public. But she brought her savvy use of social media to the royal family. When the couple announced in 2020 that they planned to step back from royal duties, they broke the news on Instagram and laid out their plans on Sussex Royal, a site designed by the same Toronto-based digital company that had The Tig designed.

When Meghan was targeted with abusive language online, Harry blamed hostile and racist press coverage. In his memoir ‘Spare’, he wrote that in the 18 months before his wedding in 2018, the tabloids’ relentless coverage of Meghan had ‘shaken all the trolls, who were now crawling out of their cellars and hiding places’.

“Ever since we recognized we were a couple,” Harry said, “we have been inundated with racist taunts and death threats on social media.”

But in Catherine’s case, the lack of press releases may have helped spread the rumors online. Kensington Palace, where she and her husband, William, have their offices, threw a veil of privacy around Catherine after her operation, offering few details about her condition or recovery other than saying she would return to work after Easter .

“The near silence on Kate’s health, which she is quite right to observe, has startled the media and created a social media frenzy that the mainstream media has fed on,” said Peter Hunt, former royal correspondent for the BBC.

Despite all the voracious coverage of the royal family, some topics are off limits. For example, gossip about the marriage of William and Catherine has long penetrated the dark depths of the web. But it rarely, if ever, surfaces in newspapers, which adhere to strict privacy guidelines imposed by Britain’s strict defamation laws.

When a grainy photo of Catherine riding in a car with her mother appeared on the American gossip site TMZ last week, British newspapers did not publish it out of respect for Kensington Palace’s call for her to be allowed to recover in peace.

Even now, after Catherine’s admission that she retouched the photo, a few tabloids have come to her defense. “Fire Kate,” you read on the front page of The Sun, which is edited by Rupert Murdoch and which usually pays generous attention to the princess. “Attacks on edited photos are absurd,” it added.

The risk to the royal family, experts say, is that Catherine’s manipulation of the photo will cast doubt on other news and images released by them, depriving the royal family of a useful channel to reach younger people. Some tabloids were openly skeptical of her. “How did Kate Photo become a PR disaster?” asked The Daily Mail. “Kate’s photobomb!” declared the Metro tabloid.

“Social media should be a win-win for the royal family, a means to spread their message unchallenged and undiluted,” Hunt said. “While most will likely forgive and forget, the risk is an erosion of trust, an important asset for the monarchy.”

The royal family’s credibility may not be the only casualty. Professor Nielsen noted that in a recent survey, 69 percent of people in Britain said they were concerned about what was real and what was fake on the internet. And that was before the swirling vortex of rumors and misinformation about Catherine.

“This could further reinforce people’s skepticism about much of what they see, both in the news media and on social media,” he said. “Not a good few days for people’s trust in the information environment.”