Royal embroilment

The announcement from Buckingham PalaceThe home of Britain's king or queen. was a solemn one: "It is with the deepest sorrow that we announce the death of Thomas Kingston... Tom was an exceptional man who lit up the lives of all who knew him. His death has come as a great shock to the whole family and we ask you to respect our privacy as we mourn his passing."

It was a statement made more in hope than in expectation. When it comes to the Royal Family, privacy is the last thing on most people's minds.

Thomas Kingston was married to Lady Gabriella Windsor, the daughter of Prince and Princess Michael of KentPrince Michael of Kent was a first cousin of Queen Elizabeth II, as well as being a first cousin of Prince Philip's mother. . His death at 45 was completely unexpected.

Kingston worked in finance, but had previously been a diplomat. One of the places he had worked was BaghdadA city in Iraq built by the Abbasids. It remains the capital of Iraq today., where he was involved in the city's only Anglican church.

According to its priest, Andrew White, "we survived some close scrapes".¹ In 2004, there was a suicide bombing at the church which killed 22 people. Kingston and White had just entered the building, but were unharmed.

White described Kingston as "an adrenaline junky".

Kingston's death was one half of what the Daily Mail's front page called a "Day of royal tragedy and drama." The other received the headline: "William mysteriously misses his godfather's memorial."

This article concerned Prince William's absence from a memorial service for King Constantine of GreeceThe last king of Greece. He reigned from 1964 until the Greek monarchy was abolished in 1973. . William was due to read a lesson, but pulled out because of a "personal matter".

What the two stories have in common is that without the royal element, nobody would find them remotely interesting. Even with it, the newspapers have had to bend over backwards to justify their excited headlines.

Thomas Kingston's death was certainly sad, but the police say there was nothing suspicious about it. And in terms of the Royal Family, he was very much on the fringes: Lady Gabriella is 56th in line to the throne.

Meanwhile, Yahoo! News devoted a 900-word article to the absent Prince William. But it admitted: "All we really know for sure is that William did not attend the memorial service."

The shortage of facts has not prevented a torrent of speculation. Was Kingston murdered by someone he had fallen foul of in Baghdad? Did the fact that King Constantine was also Lady Gabriella's godfather have something to do with William backing out of the memorial service? Some of the theories are too libellousFalse written statements about a person. to be repeated.

There is nothing new about royal conspiracy theoriesTheories that explain world events by blaming shady groups of powerful people operating in secret. Some conspiracy theories have a basis in fact, but many more of them are completely invented. What is more, they often play on dangerous prejudices such as antisemitism. It's worth being especially cautious and critical when you come across accounts that ascribe enormous agency to small and secretive groups.: the death of William's mother Diana spawned endless ones. Some people claimed that Elizabeth IThe Tudor Queen of England from 1558 to 1603. was really a man and that Queen VictoriaThe Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 1837 to 1901. Her reign is known as the Victorian era.'s grandson Prince Albert was Jack the RipperA serial killer in Victorian London who savagely murdered at least five women. The case intrigued the press and it received a great deal of coverage..

Christopher HitchensA British author and journalist. wrote² that the popularity of royal stories in the media encouraged "laziness and sentimentality and salacityThe state of being salacious - i.e. being obscene or overly interested in sexual matters. by making it too easy to fill page upon page with brainless twaddle".

Martin AmisBritish novelist whose books include The Rachel Papers and Money. His father, Kingsley Amis, was also a leading novelist. argued that England's obsession with such things was a sign of "moral decrepitude".³ He described the royal family as "philistinesA person who is hostile or indifferent to culture and the arts. ".

Should we be ashamed of ourselves?

Yes: This is gossip and nosiness at its worst. Death and memorial services should be treated with respect; both stories involve deep sadness, for which the royal family should only have our sympathy.

No: It is a basic human instinct to be interested in other people and there is no great harm in it. Speculating about the Royal Family is no different from speculating about our neighbours.  

Or... There is no smoke without fire. Some reports about the Royal Family that were initially thought baseless later turned out to be true - for example, the ones about William's parents' unhappy marriage.