Kate Middleton has united America

Has Kate Middleton united America? For the past few days, we have been one nation under her spell. The Princess of Wales has dominated Google searches in the United States ever since Kensington Palace released that now-notorious doctored photo of her with her children for Mother’s Day. Her name search beat that of both “Donald Trump” and “Joe Biden” over the past week.

To say she has broken the internet would be only the start of it: rumors of her wellbeing are making their way into every newsroom, dive bar and church fellowship hour across America.

Left-liberal pals now just want to know when I last walked by Buckingham Palace

My friends from all over the country text and call me to ask the same question: what’s happened to Kate? They know I’m as removed from the royal family as anyone could be, but I’m in London and I work in Westminster so they hope I’ve heard a theory that hasn’t made its way across the pond just yet. Left-liberal pals who usually text me when Trump says something obscene now want to know when I last walked by Buckingham Palace. Did anything seem strange? More right-leaning friends, who tend to send videos of Biden jumbling his words, want to know if it’s unusual in Britain to not wear your wedding ring. Or did someone photoshop her ring out of the Mother’s Day photo, too? Is that even her hand in the picture?

I wonder if Kate knows she has achieved the impossible in bringing America together in this way. I suppose that depends on where she’s been, how she’s been faring and how much she’s checking the news — all questions that largely remain unanswered. Either way, it’s an impressive feat and a wonderful service she has performed. Sure, it would be nice if existential threats to the United States and its citizens were cause enough for us to find common ground. But I’m not going to be picky. I will forever be grateful for this smidgen of evidence that, if the cause is compelling enough, America can pull itself back from the brink.

How did “Kate-gate” go viral in a nation that isn’t even her own? The princess’s prolonged absence from public life has the right components to capture America’s imagination. We are a country obsessed with The Crown and true crime. Since we rejected the British monarchy almost 250 years ago, we have rarely had the opportunity to combine the two. The mystery of Kate’s movements, and the online sleuthing required to discredit that photograph proved to be a golden moment.

But it’s the cover-up elements which made the story stratospheric. Like everything else in the States, conspiracy theories tend to be big — the more far-fetched, the more viral they go. Trumpist QAnon talk has never appealed to non-partisan Instagram girlies, but speculation around a princess’s whereabouts make for perfect twenty-part video series to add to your highlights reel.

That’s because Kate-gate is not your traditional conspiracy fare. The big questions — what’s happened to Kate, where has she been — have not been whipped up from nothing. Suspicion has been fed by a number of public-relations mishandlings from the palace. Stories have changed, a photo has been botched and is still being censored on social media. This is particularly strange given the normal PR slickness of the Firm: a protective, ruthless operation that presidents and popstars envy.

Some of the rumors have taken absurd and dangerous turns. But it’s not only fantasists who have questions. Something seems to be happening; we just don’t know what.

We may never find out what Kate has been up to these past months. And perhaps we shouldn’t. Her medical issues aren’t our business, after all. But we know what’s happened to her in the eyes of the public: Brand Kate has skyrocketed. She and her family have become even more intriguing — the Prince and Princess of Wales’s Instagram and X accounts gained more than 200,000 followers combined in the days after the doctored photo was posted. That intrigue has made the princess all the more sensational.

Kate is now a mega-celebrity. She has the kind of fame her sister-in-law craves so badly. Meghan Markle’s tactic was to shout from the rooftops: to make herself, and her point of view, heard through every media platform and streaming service that showed any interest. It worked for a while. Had a pandemic not scuppered her big moment, “Megxit” would have been the story of 2020. She and Harry still got to sit down with Oprah. Netflix charted their journey from the Palace to the Hollywood Hills. But attention quickly waned.

This week the duchess finds herself doing what every fame-hustler must do in the fight for survival: launching a lifestyle brand. Her Californian-inspired venture, called American Riviera Orchard, will be offering us fashion advice and gardening tips, along with another outlet selling artisan jams and yoga gear. Yet as Meghan pushes the cutlery and cookbooks, it’s absent Kate whose face is projected all over the world: a testament, if there ever was one, to the power of silence.

Given the long line of mess-ups from the Palace, this boost for Kate is a fairly good outcome. The princess disappeared for a few months, and the world made its message clear: we simply can’t bear to be without her. When she returns to public life, she will be more adored and loved than ever.

The rumors and theories will die down. The outpouring of support for the Princess of Wales will continue. It seems likely that she will, as promised, resume public duty in the spring. The future queen of England will return, radiant as ever, to stand next to her future king and her family, as if nothing ever happened. We’ll watch on, always with the niggling feeling that there was something we weren’t told, and that not knowing is the key to the charm. As Walter Bagehot said: “We must not let in daylight upon magic” — or photoshop, for that matter.

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s UK magazine. Subscribe to the World edition here.