Who is the most liked royal couple? The answer varies widely depending on who you ask. While some people champion the grace and dedication to duty that Prince William and Kate Middleton bring to the royal family, their public persona continues to err on the dull side.
Meanwhile, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle appear dynamic, charming, and approachable in the age of social accessibility. Everyone seems to love the couple and their authenticity. Even their haters stay up to date on their every move, a win as good as any.
Likability may be fun fodder for social discussions, but you probably think it doesn't actually matter to the royals. After all, William and Harry are both getting what they want. Harry is getting to break free, while William gets the glory that comes with being closer to the throne.
A recent deep dive by the New York Times' Caity Weaver proves that it actually does matter. There's something about Harry and Meghan's popularity that apparently is deeply bothering the Cambridges, or, at the very least, their team. The issue is leaving them in a scramble to catch up, and they may be turning to bot followers on Instagram to get the job done.
Prince William and Kate Middleton are the glowing centerpieces of the royal family right now. Why is it that we feel like we hardly know the couple? The shield the Cambridges have put up in their attempts to rise to their regal future may protect them from embarrassment and scandal, but it also keeps fans of the royal family from connecting with the couple on a deeper level.
William and Kate had their public personas perfected way before Harry and Meghan even became an item. Yet it feels like the couple has floundered in their quest for public adoration compared to Harry and Meghan.
The Sussexes have dared to be different and break away from some of the more oppressive traditions set by the royal family so they could be authentic to themselves. In doing so, many people have grown to appreciate and respect them. Even their biggest critics keep their eyes on what Harry and Meghan are up to.
If ever there were a place that illustrates the divide in public perception of the two couples, it's social media. The New York Times' Caity Weaver recently did a deep dive into the fascinating history of the Kensington Palace Instagram account, @KensingtonRoyal. Her findings make a great case for the fact that William and Kate, or at the very least their social media team, are bothered by Harry and Meghan's burgeoning popularity.
If you'll recall, the @KensingtonRoyal account was once home to all things William, Kate, and Harry. The royal family often positioned Harry as a third wheel to the couple, perhaps as a push to get him to settle down himself. It's no secret that Harry has long been regarded as the wild child of Prince Charles and Princess Diana's two boys.
It ran smoothly that way until late 2017, when Harry and Meghan got engaged. Meghan was happily accepted into the fold, but there were conditions. Her own Instagram account, which lagged just a few hundred thousand followers behind the Kensington Palace account, was shut down.
It was an adjustment for Meghan, who was used to being accessible to her own fans in this matter. Regardless, she went along with the protocol. Harry and Meghan's engagement and wedding brought tons of engagement and followers to @KensingtonRoyal.
That all changed in April 2019 when Harry and Meghan launched their own social media account, @SussexRoyal. It reached 1 million followers in just five hours and 45 minutes, a Guinness World Record only beaten when Jennifer Aniston joined Instagram in 2019. It was believed that the Sussex account would quickly surpass @KensingtonRoyal in followers.
Everywhere you looked, people were talking about Harry and Meghan. As the public anxiously awaited the birth of their first child, it seemed the Sussex account would beat out the Kensington account with the birth announcement.
It didn't happen then. In fact, it didn't happen at all. Despite the insane amount of news regarding Harry and Meghan from April 2019 to today, their account has never surpassed the follower count of @KensingtonRoyal.
"According to data provided by CrowdTangle, a social media analytics tool that, like Instagram, is owned by Facebook, nine of the 10 most-liked posts ever shared by either @KensingtonRoyal or @SussexRoyal showcase some combination of Harry and Meghan (and/or their son)," Caity noted.
"The single outlier is an image of William and Kate’s two eldest children taken on Princess Charlotte’s first day of school in 2019. (It came in eighth.)"
It's not just likes, either. In effectively all metrics of engagement, Harry and Meghan's account surpasses those of William and Kate's.
The article delves deep into engagement rates and possible theories as to what might have happened. A quote from Samuel Woolley, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin whose research focuses on social media political propaganda, may put it best.
He noted that there's no way to confirm that anything fishy is going on without account information that's not publicly available. He then added the CrowdTangle data is "pretty damning if we are looking for inauthentic activity."
There's one other point that makes the discrepancy particularly interesting. The @SussexRoyal account is a creator account, which allows the owners to carefully follow metrics. The @KensingtonRoyal account is a personal account, which doesn't provide that data and is largely unheard of in the management of high-profile accounts.
The analysis concludes that it's likely one of two things is happening. One is that William and Kate's team is discreetly buying bot followers to inflate their social media presence. The fact that their Facebook and Twitter accounts haven't seen the same growth as Instagram leads many consulted for the article to believe this is the case.
On the other hand, it's possible that instead of or in tandem with buying bots for themselves, they can also buy bots for Sussex Royal. Why? Because it lets them play social media god, in a sense. You can give followers just to control when they're taken away. You can even get the account flagged for suspicious followers, which could lead to a shutdown.
Of course, it's important to note that it's likely William and Kate aren't as involved in their social media presence as Harry and Meghan might choose to be. That would explain the organic appeal of one account versus the other. It doesn't explain the bigger issue, however. Why are William and Kate being internally put at odds with Harry and Meghan when the latter don't even wish to participate in most aspects of royal life?
It seems that the team behind The Firm is quite concerned with William and Kate's likability. As the throne changes hands and William eventually rises to be king, the public perception could make or break his future reign. It may be more beneficial for him and Kate to take notes rather than to engage in pettiness and possible sabotage to get what they're looking for.
