When I woke up on Monday morning, King Charles was trending on Twitter. Throughout the whole morning and into the afternoon (EST), Charles was trending alongside “Buckingham Palace” and “Royal Announcement.” The tweets were all over the place, with people suggesting that the BBC was about to announce a royal death, or that Charles had died on St. Patrick’s Day or that something huge was going down with an abdication or something. Finding a good, reputable source for any of the speculation was pretty difficult. That’s because, at least according to Buckingham Palace, the whole thing was a Russian misinformation operation. Hm, interesting cover story!
The news broke in the Russian media on Monday afternoon. King Charles III was dead. He was not, but no one really had time to check the details. The saga of the royal family finally had its latest twist: a viral Russian disinformation angle.
The rumour went into overdrive when it was shared on a Telegram channel used by Vedomosti, once Russia’s most respected business newspaper. There was a photo of Charles in ceremonial military uniform and the curt caption: “British King Charles III has died.” It made it through Russian internet channels, including Readovka, a pro-Kremlin Telegram channel with more than 2.35 million subscribers.
There was no BBC announcement or public statement from Buckingham Palace. But Readovka did have a document, provenance unknown, that it posted next to a photograph of the king. “The following announcement is made by royal communications,” it said. “The king passed away unexpectedly yesterday afternoon.” It was dated 18 March 2024. That was all.
The file, whose creator is unknown, was closely modelled on the palace’s announcement of the late queen’s death that said: “The queen died peacefully at Balmoral this afternoon.” Another version making the rounds was an abdication letter, admittedly naming Charles’s successor as “King Bob, the yellow Minion”. The news had made its way to Ukraine at this point, where it was reposted by a leading television station. It had also travelled as far as Tajikistan, where Asia-Plus, its biggest independent media outlet, had done a write-up.
But there was growing concern at this point that it might not be true. The Russian website Gazeta.Ru originally tweeted: “King Charles III of Great Britain has died. This is reported by Buckingham Palace. The monarch was 75 years old. He was recently diagnosed with cancer.” But it was later edited to add: “At the same time, nothing has been written about this in the official British media. Most likely, the information is fake.” One top Russian media editor also published the article, writing: “I can’t tell if it’s true or not.” Later, he suggested, the website of Buckingham Palace had probably been “hacked”.
By then the memes had already started. One pro-Kremlin channel published a photograph of King Charles’s head photoshopped into the recent photograph of the Princess of Wales that was rejected by several news wires. “Photo fact: Buckingham Palace has distributed a fresh photo of King Charles III to dispel rumors about his death,” the channel wrote. “London looks pathetic,” wrote the Russian foreign ministry spokesperson, sharing that post.
It’s possible that some/most of the stuff I saw on Monday was Russian disinformation, but there was some very odd specificity in some of the claims, like the flag at half-mast at Buckingham Palace and weird helicopters flying in and out of BP (both of those issues were debunked later in the day). The only thing really keeping me from believing any of it is that no matter what kind of clownery we’re seeing from Kensington Palace these days, Buckingham Palace believes in old-school protocols. If/when Charles dies, there’s already a plan and protocol in place for how it’s announced. Charles’s people might be sycophants, morons and whackjobs, but I actually trust that they wouldn’t completely f–k around with something as important as the death of a king. The whole thing will go t-ts up once the death notification is made though, because then King William’s reign of terror will commence and it will be so, so bad.
Live announcement from Buckingham palace is about to get underway pic.twitter.com/SEFlNPWZwg
— organizermemes (panda era) (@OrganizerMemes) March 18, 2024
NO WAY #RoyalAnnouncement pic.twitter.com/jR7zn3flYm
— ems 🫧 (@atotalposer) March 18, 2024
word on the street being King Charles died on Saint Patrick’s Day? pic.twitter.com/XzjqenkCvi
— Xtine (normie in training) (@Xtinekro) March 18, 2024
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It shows how much distrust there is in the royal family at the moment that people genuinely believed that Charles had died and the palace hadn’t announced it, 24 hours later. Like people heard it and thought, that seems like something they would do.
Is that Charles or Roger Stone in that laneway photo?
Does this mean that Putin has it out for Charles?
Nah. Putin’s testing disinformation channels using the BRF in the run-up to the high stakes US election.
I’m sure this won’t happen b/c chuck has never cared about anything besides Camilla and his “birthright”, but it would be amazing if he knew his last days were coming and he bestowed titles, money, honors “stuff” on the Duke and Duchess of Sussex and their children.
Something William would not be able to undo.
Wonder if all the celebrations over this false rumor along with his cancer diagnosis will finally rattle Charles enough that he changes at least a little, or is that giving him too much depth? I would never leave my house if the world was celebrating my death the way they were his🥴
When you lie and show people you are controlling the national media in every way, you can’t blame people for not believing what they see from the mainstream media. The distrust created by Kensington Palace was never gonna be limited to just KP. That’s why it was stupid for Charles no to interfere with clowning in KP.
“ The whole thing will go t-ts up once the death notification is made though, because then King William’s reign of terror will commence and it will be so, so bad.”
King William’s reign of terrible? I’m not sure he’s capable of terror.
Some of this looks like an odd reminder that news media will do things like repeat what they see in news media.
This is a good example of bow disinformation works, get enough accounts online talking and people start to believe it. Katie on Tik Tok.isn’t a reputable source
If you can’t track back to the source of the rumor go check news sources like BBC, Guardian (UK) and in the US larger papers and broadcast news reporters. Those sources aren’t going to share info unless it’s been verified.
It IS a good idea to dust off our digital literacy skills in preparation for what’s going to be a long season of disinformation.
“’London looks pathetic,’ wrote the Russian foreign ministry spokesperson.” Good lord! That’s chilling.
I wonder if the British government is now worrying about having let so much London real estate get sold to Russians….
Some of the Russian media outlets looked pretty pathetic too. Putin apparently pranked his own state controlled media since they were all ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
I wonder how many “in the know at the top level” how destabilising FK will be as William the Unsteady when he becomes king. If UK have another big crisis or disaster when he’s king then if it coincides with 19 week school vacs or happens outside 10-4pm working day, he aint rushing back to steady the ship!
I don’t know, the palace people have been pretty much incompetent lately so if Charles does die these days I’m not even sure they would publicly announce it right away. Plus if William and his people are in charge I don’t think they’ll do a great job for a royal funeral.
I don’t know when the death rumors entered the chat, but mainstream media in Pakistan were reporting they’d heard the BBC was on standby for a royal announcement on Sunday. This wasn’t Just Russians having fun telling twitter chuck was dead there were other moving pieces.