The pictures of Britain’s Prince Louis grinning ear to ear in the stands of the Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome on Saturday, watching the track cycling at the Glasgow Commonwealth Games in a bucket hat emblazoned with the words “Beicio Cymru” (“Welsh Cycling,” in Welsh) have understandably grabbed the headlines.
But look at the wider set of images from Glasgow (the five members of the Wales family sitting together in the stands, Louis theatrically yawning, high-fiving and fist-bumping Finnie, the Games’ unicorn mascot, the family cheering on the netball semi-final between Australia and Jamaica at the Hydro) and what you are actually looking at is the most successful media strategy in modern royal history operating at the very top of its game.
The choreography was classic Kensington Palace. William and Catherine’s attendance (as the Duke and Duchess of Rothesay, their Scottish titles) was announced in advance; the presence of all three children was kept under wraps until they arrived.
It was, remarkably, the children’s first public appearance in Scotland, a country with which the whole family has deep ties through Balmoral. It was also Louis’ first major international sporting fixture, a milestone his older siblings passed years ago at Wimbledon and soccer’s European Championship.
The Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh (Edward and Sophie) were seated nearby, along with six-time Olympic cycling champion Sir Chris Hoy. Everything about the day said: managed access, on our terms, delivered, in return, with a smile.
It is worth remembering how hard-won this equilibrium is. When I was a trainee reporter at The Daily Telegraph in (I think!) the late 1990s, one of my first assignments was a briefing at the palace ahead of William going to university. The deal on offer was simple: a set of photographs would be released to the media, and in exchange, William would be left alone at St Andrews.
Famously, the entire British media complied, with one mortifying exception: Prince Edward’s television production company, Ardent, which sent a crew to film William on campus and broke the embargo, a gaffe now largely forgotten but which ultimately ended Edward’s TV career.
The St Andrews deal established the principle that still governs royal photos today. In the wake of Diana’s death, the initial instinct had been prohibition (ban the paparazzi photographs outright). It didn’t work, because prohibition never works when there is a market. So the strategy was flipped: flood the market instead.
By releasing a steady supply of pin-sharp, professionally taken images of the children, even if only in relatively formal settings, the palace destroyed the commercial value of the snatched paparazzi shot. Why would a picture desk pay six figures for a grainy long-lens photograph of George when a beautiful official image is freely available?
Even the Waleses had to be talked into it. Their original instinct, when the children were very young, was restriction. In 2015, William’s then communications secretary Jason Knauf sent an extraordinary letter to the media detailing the tactics being used to obtain “cute” pictures of Prince George, including photographers hiding in the trunks of parked cars with holes drilled for lenses.
The message was that consumers of these adorable images had no idea how invasively they were obtained, and that the alternative was children condemned to live behind walls, the old-fashioned way. The palace ultimately concluded, however, that there was another way after all, and that supply-side economics was the better answer. And it has worked. The Wales children play sport, go to friends’ houses, visit the farm shop near Windsor. They don’t stroll down Windsor High Street, but they live something recognizably adjacent to a normal childhood.
The natural point of contrast, of course, is Montecito.
Harry and Meghan’s approach to their children (concealment, or rather partial, strategic concealment) has created a very strange atmosphere around pictures of Archie and Lilibet. The implicit message of hiding your children suggests that anyone who might want to see a picture of them is suspicious, that the interest itself is somehow unhealthy.
And yet the images come, whether it is Lilibet taking flowers to Diana’s grave, or the classic shiny montage of the Instagram era (the child thrown laughing through the air into the pool, the dancing, the cookie-baking, the little hand reaching into the jam), there always seems to be an ulterior motive attached: a commercial launch, a controversy stoked, a point scored. It never seems possible for it to be just a nice, straightforward picture of the kids.
The emotional grammar of the two photo streams is entirely different.
Harry and Meghan’s images invite envy. Look at the pool, the gardens, the closet reportedly containing $250,000 of Chloé before a trip to Geneva. Isn’t our life amazing?
The Wales images, by contrast, are anchored in public service. Saturday’s outing was, essentially, a plug for the Commonwealth Games, an event so neglected in the U.K. that it no longer commands mainstream TV coverage. The message to the children is legible in the pictures themselves: this is what we do, put on your best bib and tucker, show up, behave, wave. It is public service being instilled in the next generation in real time, and the public can see it happening.
Media theorists have a name for the bond between audiences and public figures they will never meet: the parasocial relationship, a term coined by Donald Horton and Richard Wohl back in 1956. Parasocial relationships can be functional or dysfunctional, and the two royal households now offer a near-perfect controlled experiment.
The Waleses have built a functional one: the audience is invited in, on limited but generous terms, and rewards the family with sympathy, warmth, and goodwill.
The Sussexes have built a dysfunctional one.
And then there is the simplest reading of Saturday’s pictures. Consider what these five people have absorbed in six years: everything Harry and Meghan threw at them, the accusations, the books, the documentaries; the death of the Queen; William’s transformation into heir; and Catherine’s cancer diagnosis and treatment. That is a lot.
William looks older in these pictures, and, one might say, wiser. The children just look happy. In the end, that is the most powerful piece of image-making of all.
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