The Princess of Wales recently released a carefully choreographed video to announce the end of her chemotherapy treatment. The need to do something so grandiose was no doubt prompted by the absurd conspiracy theories — we need not revisit the gruesome details here — that had spread when she retreated from public view. Previous attempts to share health updates or simply to communicate a cheery message prompted monstrous comments and speculation from trolls of the highest order, culminating in a “scandal” when the Princess was found to have edited a Mother’s Day photograph. So this time Kensington Palace evidently decided it would be safer to bring in a pro.  

Needless to say, the film was subjected to intense scrutiny. The tabloid press picked over the “coded messages” hidden therein (Battle of Britain playing cards!). Everything you could possibly aspire to buy was tracked down, from Catherine’s dress to the particular flavour of Tyrrell’s crisps. Perhaps the video should have come with a health-and-safety warning, since we were told that it featured both a potentially toxic potted plant and children playing dangerously on piles of logs. 

The Guardian parsed the video in no fewer than four articles. Hilary Osborne, a former cancer sufferer, wrote of finding the video upsetting and in poor taste, and readers wrote in to concur. Marina Hyde was spiteful, mocking the Waleses’ decision to commission “some ad man” who had previously shot campaigns for Uber Eats to create a film that looked like an advert for Center Parcs. Where previously the Princess had been attacked for hiding away, she was now portrayed as revelling in self-indulgence. Quite frankly the poor woman cannot win.

A recent visit to the exhibition “Royal Portraits: A Century of Photography”, which runs at the King’s gallery at Buckingham Palace until 6 October, provided some interesting insights into the lengths to which the Royal Family goes to control its image. There have been many times when it was deemed necessary to use an attractive family member for a rebranding exercise. The exhibition includes a set of images of the young Queen Elizabeth (later the Queen Mother), taken in 1939 by Cecil Beaton. The Queen twirled and posed in white Norman Hartnell dresses in the grounds of Buckingham Palace, holding a parasol and enjoying herself thoroughly in what she knew perfectly well was pure theatre. Equally striking, in a rather different way, is an image of her with George VI, beaming at each other amid ruins after a bomb had landed on the Palace. The nation must keep calm and carry on, the picture seemed to say, and so must we.

Intriguingly, the exhibition is upfront about the fact that royal images have sometimes been manipulated. The notes accompanying photographs of Elizabeth II taken by Annie Leibovitz readily reveal that in some the Queen was superimposed onto the background. Elsewhere the exhibition traces the progression of a family portrait from first commission to final approved image, showing that touching up photos to remove less than desirable elements is an integral part of the process. No, this doesn’t mean cropping Prince Andrew out of the shot, but we are shown how Lord Snowdon in 1957 removed a “halo” of leaves from behind Prince Philip’s head. How bemused the royal households must have been by the hoo-ha surrounding the Mother’s Day portrait. Editing per se wasn’t a problem, only the fact that it hadn’t been done very well. 

Royal women have always had to do the heavy lifting in terms of bestowing the monarchy with an aura of glamour. Acres of gauzy white chiffon spin a connecting thread between a tiny photograph of Alexandra, Princess of Wales, in the 1860s, a Beaton portrait of a crinolined Princess Margaret, and Paolo Roversi’s serene image of the then-Duchess of Cambridge to mark her 40th birthday in 2021. How relieved the young Princess Elizabeth must have been when she was allowed to pose in her army uniform. 

Of course Diana raised the stakes for all who would follow, even after she had formally left the Royal Family, with her hyper-glamorous and now poignant Mario Testino 1997 photo shoot for Vanity Fair. Camilla, in photos taken for Vogue when the Duchess of Cornwall, suggested — refreshingly—– that she couldn’t give a damn about image. In one she is depicted wearing glasses, with a book on her lap, as if to say “look at my work (as a literacy champion), not at me”. In another, evoking a HammershØi painting, she has quite simply turned her back on the lens. 

A frisson of republican fervour may abound in the UK these days, but there are still many who demand from the Royals a certain mystique and romance. The Royal Family is undoubtedly painfully aware of the balance that needs to be struck between being just like us and yet nothing like us. This was a tension they were starting to grapple with as far back as 1969 when the nation was shown Prince Philip barbecuing sausages, in a video later deemed by some to have been a mistake.

The new video seems to raise the stakes in terms of projecting an image of perfect family life: Hollywood trailer meets Boden catalogue; a fairy tale in hippie dresses and shorts. Even keen royal-watchers may have raised an eyebrow at this new aesthetic, with its dreamy shots of woods and sand dunes, pensive voiceover, and sombre swelling soundtrack. At times it feels almost embarrassingly intrusive. 

It is a shame that a woman who has been through a serious illness and gruelling treatment — the details of which we know almost nothing — should feel compelled to display herself in this manner, but we have seen where dignified silence leads. The Royals have shown that they can do portraiture — at least when a pro is behind the camera — but this new world of hyper-aestheticised, video-based PR, driven by Instagram, and with one eye nervously on whatever might emanate next from Netflix, may prove harder to master. Recent events have shown the existence of an alarmingly ruthless baying mob, determined to hold the Princess to impossible beauty standards and drag her down whatever she may do. Yes, the new video may seem manipulative, but who is actually manipulating whom?