Have Prince William & Kate Middleton Discovered The Perfect Ratio Of Public To Private Exposure?

Have Prince William and Kate Middleton taken a “huge gamble,” in how they are handling their private lives? According to one royal watcher, they may be, with the consequences as yet unknown.

To put this matter into perspective, William attended over 200 royal engagements last year while the number was halved for the Duchess. On top of that, they are in the public eye pretty much 24/7.

But when it comes to their personal lives, what goes on behind closed doors is shielded. This comes at a time when individuals are documenting the minutia of their lives on social media, so Kate and William have effectively gone against the grain in an attempt to keep a degree of privacy for their family.
Are William and Kate’s personal social media absence hurting their image?

In the 2017 documentary, Kate: The Making of a Modern Queen, royal watcher Catherine Myer said that their absence of personal social media could give the public the idea that they are not very involved, a common accusation put to royal family members.

“They are, I think, interestingly positioning themselves for the age that they are in the era in which they are in the public eye,” she said, “which is, of course, a social media-saturated, Instagram selfie era, where they are in some way going very much against the tide on that, trying to reclaim something for themselves.

“Now, I think that is potentially quite a clever thing to do in the long run.” But in the short run?

“In the short term, it is inciting the ire of the press, so they’re getting a more negative press as a result, because the press feels shut out and you see some quite silly and nasty reporting as a result.”

“But there is also the danger that they just end up looking like they’re not doing very much, which is the big criticism.”

Does the public perceive Kate and William as loafers or as doers?

Today more than ever the public wants to know how much money the royals take and how much work they do in exchange. Theirs is seen as an “easy” existence and perhaps not earning the money they are given.

Emily Nash notes that “William guards the privacy of his family more highly than anything else in his life and it doesn’t take a psychologist to work out why. You only need to look at William’s own background, his relationship with his mother, what happened to his mother, the untimely death, preceding that, the breakdown of the Waleses’ marriage, everything played out in the media, poured over in the press and he hated it.”

“And you can completely understand why all he wants is a quiet family life out of the spotlight.” Yes, it absolutely makes sense, but I think that in the coronavirus epoch the Cambridges have managed to find the perfect balance between privacy and being out there in public in a quantifiable, professional and manageable way.