Kate Middleton Theories Are Getting Weirder and Weirder

Kate Middleton has been targeted with a “sick” fake video that was viewed close to half a million times after it went viral on X.

Kensington Palace said the Princess of Wales would be off royal duties until after Easter when it announced her abdominal surgery in January.

However, speculation became rampant that the palace was hiding something, with many on social media embarking on wild theories.

An early rumor suggesting Kate was in a medically induced coma was dismissed by the palace as “ludicrous,” but as time has worn on the theories have become increasingly morbid and insensitive.

One clearly fake video was described as “despicable & unhinged,” after a user on X, formerly Twitter, claimed it showed grainy footage of the princess being cremated.

Suffice to say, it looked in reality closer to a Rorschach ink splatter test than a picture of any real life event of any kind, but it still had more than 412,000 views at the time of writing.

An earlier Tweet from the same account suggested Kate had been murdered, and that was viewed 1 million times, while the poster’s husband was busy spreading his own fake and seemingly contradictory conspiracy theories.

Just 38 minutes after the wife’s claim that Kate had passed away, the husband suggested she was “currently being held in a mental institution against her will,” in a post viewed almost 3 million times.

Both accounts link to each other and describe themselves as married. For context, no mainstream British newspaper currently sells as many as 1 million copies per day in print.

One reply to the wife’s post read: “This is just sick. The depths you are resorting to in order to hound the Princess of Wales is despicable & unhinged.”

“This is a fake video & I hope you get sued,” the reply added.

Another described the two posts as “unbelievable levels of nonsense,” while another said: “If you can’t verify it how about don’t post it.”

There have been two photographs of Kate taken by photographers since her operation, but one was shot through the windscreen of a moving car on a long lens, meaning the image quality was very grainy.

In the other, she was looking away from photographers on the back seat of a car with her face in shadow as she accompanied Prince William on a trip to London.

Absurd theories are nothing new in royal reporting, but the past few weeks have seen increasingly extreme speculation gain huge audiences on social media, particularly Twitter.

Some claims will naturally be exposed as false as time passes and Kate returns to the public eye, but the royal family remains at risk that a general sense of covering things up will take firm root in the public imagination.

Fueling this, are assessments like the one made last week by the AFP news agency that Kensington Palace is no longer a reliable source following Kate’s editing of a Mother’s Day photo.

The palace’s original statement, on January 17, a day after her operation, read: “Her Royal Highness The Princess of Wales was admitted to The London Clinic yesterday for planned abdominal surgery.

“The surgery was successful and it is expected that she will remain in hospital for ten to fourteen days, before returning home to continue her recovery. Based on the current medical advice, she is unlikely to return to public duties until after Easter.

“The Princess of Wales appreciates the interest this statement will generate. She hopes that the public will understand her desire to maintain as much normality for her children as possible; and her wish that her personal medical information remains private.

“Kensington Palace will, therefore, only provide updates on Her Royal Highness’ progress when there is significant new information to share.

“The Princess of Wales wishes to apologise to all those concerned for the fact that she has to postpone her upcoming engagements. She looks forward to reinstating as many as possible, as soon as possible.”

Jack Royston is Newsweek‘s chief royal correspondent based in London. You can find him on X, formerly Twitter, at @jack_royston and read his stories on Newsweek’s The Royals Facebook page.

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