Wait, the Wessexes have been on a royal tour of the Cayman Islands all week?

2023-02-23

Last year, ahead of Queen Elizabeth’s Jubbly, various Windsors were sent around to Commonwealth nations to “celebrate” Liz’s platinum year on the throne. Prince William and Kate were sent to the Caribbean on what became one of the funniest Flop Tours of all time. Their tour was full of tone-deaf colonialist imagery, chain-link fences, Kate backing away from Black people and the then-Cambridges getting fired live on camera in Jamaica. It was glorious. Then just a few weeks later, the Earl and Countess of Wessex were sent to the Caribbean too, to visit all of the countries Kate and William didn’t get to. The Wessexes made a big deal about how they wouldn’t f–k it up and then, you guessed it, they flopped too.

The thing is, even though the Wessexes’ Caribbean tour flopped just as badly as Will and Kate’s, barely anyone paid attention to it. There were fewer media outlets on the Wessexes’ tour and the photo-ops were more tightly controlled. Still, the dueling Flop Tours were enough to make the Windsors realize that they couldn’t go on their colonialist tours the same way anymore. Crash-cut to this year, where Princess Anne recently went to Australia and New Zealand and she barely got any attention whatsoever. Sophie and Edward said to themselves: that’s the way to do it, we’ll go on tour and not bring any media with us at all. And that’s exactly what they’re doing.

Sophie and Edward flew to the Cayman Islands for a tour this week. They’ve literally been there all week and I can’t find ANY photo agency covering the tour at all. The only people photographing them are the British embassies and the Cayman government. Part of this is about controlling the message, of course. But part of it is that… they’re really making the British taxpayer pick up the tab for their Caribbean vacations (I mean “tours”) and then they’re not opening anything up to the international media??

So is this the new model for how the Windsors do foreign tours now that King Charles is in charge? No-media tours with tightly controlled imagery from the government? That’s just… political propaganda. I mean, it always was.

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Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Instar, Instagram, Backgrid, Cover Images.

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