For figureheads who do not serve an outwardly practical role in society, the British royal family attract a great deal of interest both nationally and worldwide. 24.5 million people around the world tuned in for Kate and William’s wedding in 2011, whilst the Diamond Jubilee Concert drew 16.9 million viewers, without counting the additional million lining London’s streets. Even Kate and Will’s visit to Cambridge saw more than 450 people join in on the celebrations for the royal pair, with crowds also lining the streets just to catch a glimpse of them. Last year’s Ipsos Mori polls showed that 79% of the people asked were in favour of Britain remaining a monarchy, whilst three in five think Britain will still have a royal household in fifty years’ time. In a Guardian/ICM poll of 2012, the royal popularity rating hit a fifteen-year high in Britain. However, this interest has been shown to drastically breach our own borders, with the state-run Chinese newspaper China Daily reporting on the due date for Kate’s pregnancy as one of its main stories when the news broke out, and with the New York Post making Kate’s official portrait its cover story only a few weeks ago. And they weren’t the only ones.

In contrast to this international attention of British royalty, there is a noticeable media black-out for the royalty of other countries. The Japanese monarchy is hardly covered by the world press despite facing an ongoing major succession crisis. The eight Arab monarchies have been mentioned only briefly in the international and British press in light of the Arab Spring, but are left outside of the royal media frenzy surrounding the Windsors. We also find this with other members of European royalty: in 2010 the heir to the Swedish throne Crown Princess Victoria married an average Joe: her former fitness instructor Daniel Westling. Despite 250,000 people turning up to line the streets of Stockholm to witness the occasion, very little was said about this in the British media, whilst the class difference between the Middleton’s relatively nouveau millions and the royal lineage came as a consistently hot media topic preceding the royal wedding in April, 2011.

So how do we explain the hysteria exclusively surrounding the British royals? Stéphane Bern argued in Le Parisien in December 2012 that the popularity of the royal family could be attributed to filling a need for consistency in contemporary British society, with Britons feeling “reassured about their future as a nation” thanks to the presence of the royalty. A 2005 ETHNOS research paper suggested that ‘Britishness’ is closely associated with the monarchy, and another paper that year detailed a perceived loss of ‘Britishness’ taking place, which therefore implies that our revival of interest in the royals may be driven by a need to cling to the most ‘British’ of institutions. But neither of these especially explains why other nations should be interested in the Windsors almost exclusively.

In fact, it may well be that the careful work of regenerating the British royal family’s image has made them as popular all over the world as they are today. In this way, the royals themselves could be seen as the masterminds behind the obsession surrounding them, as they actively promote interest in the daily events of the family, similar to celebrities and businesses, working on their image on another level to other monarchies.

In the past, the Christmas speech formed the primary means of utilising media to connect the nation to the Queen; a tradition initiated on the radio by George V in 1932, proceeding to be televised in 1957 by Elizabeth II.. Today, social media has reached a whole other level of proliferation, giving anyone the ability to receive a royal update via their YouTube channel, their Flickr page, Facebook page or Twitter. The plethora of mediums used by the royal family suggests a whole new modernised approach to publicity by the household, through actively embracing these fast expanding modes of communication.

This changing perception of the royal family was arguably accelerated by the input of Diana. In an article featured in People in 1990, she was credited with “nudging the royal family into the modern world” during her marriage  The feature focused on the way in which she drove her sons to school and did aerobics in her spare time; behaving like many other contemporary women. Using charity work and an original sense of style to boost public image globally was not frequently seen at the time, and yet they would become common tropes of certain celebrities’ only 20 years later, seen in the likes of Madonna and Angelia Jolie.

Diana had to openly embrace the media revolution of the 1990s to fight against the intensive spot light she had been thrust under at the age of 19. In the 1995 Panorama interview with Diana, she talks about the pressures of the ever-attentive media, saying: “we were told when we got engaged that the media would go quietly, and it didn't; and then when we were married they said it would go quietly and it didn't; and then it started to focus very much on me, and I seemed to be on the front of a newspaper every single day, which is an isolating experience, and the higher the media put you, place you, is the bigger the drop.” The interview was watched by 21.5 million people and was a prime example of what she defined in the interview as her ability to prevail in the “sink or swim” nature of her circumstances. In Tina Brown’s 2007 biography The Diana Chronicles, she describes Diana as being “obsessed with her public image” and “media-savvy”; a master of manipulating media attention. Fierce criticism of the royal institution as a whole in the country and abroad was sparked during their delayed and – seen by many as inappropriate – reaction to Diana’s death in 1997, whereby the Queen was seen to have returned without any degree of haste to London to mourn with the people. It appears as though the royals have learnt from Diana, unable any longer to preserve staunch silences, and have progressed to work carefully with the media directly, rather than struggling as Diana was left to do. This direct co-operation led to what was considered remarkable restraint in media coverage of William during his time at Eton, for which the then eighteen-year-old Prince expressed gratitude in a speech.

Today, the British royal family has a multitude of advisers helping them to control their public image on a daily basis. By working with the media, they have achieved a symbiotic relationship. Amongst the main advisers is Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton, who has been the private secretary to Charles, Camilla, Kate, William and Harry since 2005. Another key figure is Paddy Harverson, who was voted PR Week’s 2011 top PR professional. Harverson has been head of Clarence House's communications team since 2003 and is credited with improving relations with the tabloids, improving public opinion of the Duchess of Cornwall, as well as orchestrating the smooth running of the marriage of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.

A major part of this process has been the presentation of the British royals as being ‘down with the times’, in which Kate and Harry have played an instrumental role. The young royals want us to think that they are just like the rest of the public, as they fly on budget airlines for their holidays – and make sure the press know about it. This includes Prince Harry’s wild image, as it has been suggested by the editor-in-chief of Majesty magazine Ingrid Seward that Harry’s party-boy image is the very reason for his popularity. This populist image allows us to identify with the young royals, which explains why Kate’s ‘commoner’ background is so highly emphasised, with a 2010 Guardian article reading “How ‘commoner’ Kate Middleton won Prince William’s heart”.

Simultaneously, the royal PR ensures that the family retain an air of mystique and glamour around them, through the attendance of prestigious award ceremonies and the taking of private yachting holidays. In the 1990s, there was a trend for having ‘the Rachel’ hairstyle, copying that of Jennifer Aniston’s in the series ‘Friends’. Today, women are asking for ‘the Kate’ in aspiring to look like the former Miss Middleton. This reflects the dual image given out by the household of their youngest, and newest member: we envy Kate’s new-found glamour as the nation’s princess, and yet she interacts with the public along with the other royals, giving a personal link between the monarchy and its subjects; a link that Diana arguably instilled.

The Windsors are masters of PR, way ahead of other royal households in this respect. We – and people all over the globe – have a compulsion to find out what they’re up to, what they’re wearing and what the baby’s name will be. Our relationship with royalty today is part of celebrity culture, and we stalk their every move like a reality show. This is why US Weekly,People, China Dail and Le Figaro consistently feature the royals. Starting from Diana, the British royals have shown us that they do things just like us, the rest of the public, being ‘normal’ and cutting costs in times of economic downturn. In this way, not only do we want the young royals Harry and Kate to be our friends, but we also aspire to be them. And this is a powerful recipe for public approval for the royal family as a whole.