Prince William and Kate Middleton’s much-hyped Boston tour took a bit of a backseat to the trailers for Meghan Markle and Prince Harry’s Netflix documentary series and the palace’s racism scandal last week, but the Prince and Princess of Wales made their first social media posts following the Harry & Meghan trailer release on Monday particularly interesting—and telling.
The first, shared on December 5, was a post thanking those in Boston for their royal trip—a signal that things are still business as usual for the royals. The second photo in the gallery featured William’s hand on Kate’s back at the Earthshot Prize Awards, a little sprinkle of PDA in an otherwise standard royal tour gallery.
This morning, while much of the British tabloid coverage was focused on Harry and Meghan’s Netflix series, the prince and princess, who notedly almost never show any public displays of affection, posted a series of black-and-white behind-the-scenes photos taken by Chris Jackson for the Earthshot Prize featuring them being unusually lovey again. “Behind the scenes at the second annual #EarthshotPrize awards ceremony 🌎🏆,” they captioned the post. “Celebrating brilliant solutions and the inspiring people behind them!”
The couple didn’t say anything about Meghan and Harry’s project, which infamously featured a photo of them glaring in its first teaser, in either their Earthshot post or “thank you, Boston” post. They also didn’t comment on the Harry & Meghan project during their trip at all.
The romantic Instagram could arguably be considered as yet another attempt by Kate and William to put the focus of the news cycle back on them and the Earthshot Prize Awards (which faced some controversy itself as celebrities attended the ceremony, but honorees accepted their awards remotely to reduce the carbon footprint required for traveling). But it seems not even a rare public lovefest between the prince and princess can distract the internet writ large from the promise of the royal family’s drama being revealed.
Senior News and Strategy Editor
Alyssa Bailey is the senior news and strategy editor at ELLE.com, where she oversees coverage of celebrities and royals (particularly Meghan Markle and Kate Middleton). She previously held positions at InStyle and Cosmopolitan. When she’s not working, she loves running around Central Park, making people take #ootd pics of her, and exploring New York City.