The announcement of the cancer of Kate Middletona year ago, it was a serious blow for everyone, not only for those who admire the princess and follow the events of the British Royal Family. The speech, widespread through a video message, came after weeks of absurd conspiracy theories born on the web that involved the future queen. For some months, however, they have become increasingly insistent than the rumors that a part of the surreal and ridiculous hypotheses circulated on social media would have been skillfully built by Russia to generate confusion and apprehension among the subjects of his majesty, destabilizing the whole kingdom.
Kate’s speech
“In January I underwent an abdominal operation in London and at that moment it was believed that mine was not a tumor form”explained Kate in the speech of March 22, 2024, mentioned by the CNN. “Despite this, the post operators tests took over the presence of cancer …”. The video message threw everyone into despair, raising doubts not only about the fate of the Princess of Walesbut of the entire monarchy.
Those words, however, also put an end to months of tremendous, senseless illunctions on the reasons why Kate no longer appeared in public since the previous Christmas and did not give more news of himself, of his condition, from the operation to the abdomen, which took place on January 17, 2024. On social networks, some claimed that the princess was “In coma”others even feared death. There was no shortage of those who hypothesize that Kate suffered from eating disorders like Diana and those who spoke of a lifting, or even the donation of a kidney a Charles III.
The scandal of the retouched photo that the princess of Wales published on March 10, 2024, on the occasion of Mother’s Day and which portrayed her with her three children, did nothing but increase doubts and the theories of plot. To restore the truth Kate would have chosen to write the speech pronounced in March 2024 alone. Without the help of the Kensington Palace staff. A decisiveone socket “Two weeks earlier” that the video message was widespread, as specified at the BBC Victoria Newton, editor of the Sun.
The princess also explained the reason that had led her to wait in silence Before telling his vicissitudes: “(What happened) It was a shock and William and I did everything we could to manage (the situation) in private for the good of our young family. As you can imagine, it took time. It took me time to recover from the intervention, in order to start treatment. But above all, we wanted time to explain everything to George, Charlotte and Louis in a way that was appropriate for them …”.
Without a doubt the convalescence after the operation of January 17, 2024 and the need to explain to children the question without scaring them are two essential reasons, which perfectly explain the long silence of the principles of Wales and the decision to face the public only two months after theoperation suffered by Kate.
However, it seems that in the drafting of the speech and in the choice of the most appropriate moment to pronounce him the princess did not have to take into account only the presence of the children and the pressing expectant who had been created around his figure and his health conditions, but also of a very serious danger: the alleged false news Masses in circulation on the web by Russian hackers ready to destabilize the kingdom and the monarchy by exploiting its illness.
“Doppelgänger”
Kate Middleton would have been forced to accelerate the times, writing the speech of March 22 not only to appease the web, but above all to definitively silence some precise fake news. We do not talk so much about the lies invented by users, perhaps a little too imaginative, ironic, or in the mood to tell buffaloes for who knows what strange and questionable form of fun, but of the lies generated artfully by experts. From those who knew how and where to hit the Royal Family And he would have had all the interest in doing it.
In October 2024 GB News announced that the British government would punish the group “Doppelgänger”accused of having released false news on the health of the Wales Princess. It would be a “Russian disinformation network”he wrote the GB News website again, “Consisting of six Russian agencies and individuals” that they would have “Tried to instigate the division within the countries that support Ukraine in the war against Russia”. The same group of disinformation discovered by France and publicly reported in June 2023, which would also be able to reconstruct web pages of authoritative and even institutional sites by filling them with fake news but in favor of Russian propaganda.
The British Foreign Office did not hesitate to define “Doppelgänger” “A large, evil online network” that would use false news to discredit, destroy, create chaos. In a nutshell, to disintegrate democracy and make the values of freedom and justice dissolved over the centuries with great effort and the cost of many lives. British Foreign Minister David Lammy, cited by the BBC, was very clear in proposed: “Putin is capable of everything to undermine European support to Ukraine to be resorted to clumsy, ineffective attempts to increase the disorder”.
In the United Kingdom the presence of the group of disinformation Russo was identified by the University of Cardiff. The director of the Security, Crime and Intelligence Innovation Institute of the University, Professor Martin Innes, explained to the BBC: “The distinctive method of Doppelgänger is to implement a large number of accounts of US social media account, throws to flood the information space on certain stories”. As for Kate, the modus operandi would have been very simple: “This (system) is particularly powerful when they are able to amplify narrative that seems less openly political”.
It would not be strange at all: the link between the disease of the princess And internal or foreign political issues is less evident. Not many have posed the problem of Kate’s impact of Cancer on the British, their morals, on the monarchy estate, nor have they imagined that this situation could be exploited to generate instability in the country. This leads too many people to share false content without even suspecting that there may be a disinformation campaign for political purposes behind.
Grafting He continued: “This is exactly what (the group) did trying to exploit the gossip and conspiracy theories on the princess of Wales. Repeating and relaunching (fake news) were able to disperse their anti-Ukrainian messages, while they attacked a key British institution, the Royal Family”.
The principles were “upset”
Fake profiles created to build, spread fake news On Kate persistently, so as to stun users, in a certain sense. “It concerns destabilization”said NBC Innes in March 2024. “It is a matter of undermining trust in the institutions: the government, the monarchy, the media, everything. This type of stories are ideal vehicles to achieve the purpose”. If there is no confidence, there is also a division, so fear of others and what will happen. A wall of paranoia that reason struggles to break down. This is one of the methods of disinformation.
False news “They cause an emotional reaction”, Professor Innes said, mentioned by the New York Times. As if they turned off rationality, submerging an often evident and intuitive truth under the heaps of garbage (dis) information that then become our thoughts and our life. Just to avoid this political and social destabilization and permanently silence i “troll”Kate would have felt forced to pronounce the speech of March 22, 2024.
A hypothesis re -proposed these days by the Daily Mail, according to which i Principles of Wales they would remain “Upset” From the Russian disinformation tsunami and soon they would no longer be able to tolerate media pressure. In addition, in that period the scandal of the Photo RItouched by Kate with the children. Aid unexpected for Russian hackers. For unfortunate and in a naturally completely unaware way by manipulating the image the princess would have served a very powerful weapon to be used against the monarchy on the classic “silver plate”.
The royal author Robert Hardman commented on People: “(William and Kate) they felt injured (from the history of the photo)” That “It was treated as if it were a great deception”. Also because the atmosphere was already stretched due to the fake news that circulated and the silence of the Building on the situation of the princess. “For them it was like being on an roller coaster”revealed to the People Ailsa Anderson, former press officer of Queen Elizabeth. “The ongoing chemotherapy, the fact of having to try to protect the children. It was like being in the middle of a tornado and not knowing when he would calm down.”
The principles would have found themselves stuck, we say, in a disconcerting situation, a kind of running against time: on the one hand there were George, Charlotte and Louis who had to be prepared to receive the news of the mother’s illness, while Kate recovered the forces after the operation and began the chemotherapy. On the other every day the web overflowed with absurdities that no one could stop. The only one who could do it was Kate. With her moving video message, the princess prevented not only the proliferation of fake news on her conditions, but also the destabilization of her country.
An exaggeration? Not at all
Think that fake news on Kate are directly connected to the conflict in Ukraine It is an attempt to weaken the British government and the state is not an exaggeration. It is the reality of our time, in which wars are also made through the lack of information or the invention and the manipulation of news.
These battles with bugie strokes are quite effective also due to the behavior of many social users and, in general, of the web. According to a study published in Nature Human Behaviour, quoted by the monthly Focus (number 390, of March 20, 2025) only one in four person read one in full news before sharing it on social networks. The others did not go beyond the title.
The research examined 35 million posts published between 2017 and 2020, discovering that 75% of the shares was carried out without opening the link in the post that refers to the news. Behavior also adopted with political publications. This means that in 75% of the cases they examined users did not deepen their knowledge of what they were about to share, nor have they verified the sources. As a result, the problem of understanding if what they were spreading through their profiles were not true, if it had concrete, reliable bases.
On this
superficiality, however, “plays” subtlely those who despise freedom of thought and speech and want to impose a deviated vision of the facts that spyy the way for disorientation, often a prelude to the despotism.