Kate's cancer struggle is even front- page news in Ecuador, says historian IAN ... trends now
After a professional lifetime of watching the British Royal Family, first as a professional photographer and now as a historian, I've got a pretty good grasp of how the media coverage works, the incessant nature of it, and so on.
That, at least, is what I thought - until the health struggles of King Charles and, more particularly, Catherine, the Princess of Wales.
The world-wide attention is on a scale I've never seen before, with the possible exception of the coverage devoted to Diana amid the dramatic collapse of her marriage to Charles.
In the wake of Kate’s moving video message, in which she revealed her cancer diagnosis, I looked at the coverage in overseas newspapers - and the results surprised even me.
An image from Catherine's powerful video address, in which she told the world of her cancer diagnosis
King Charles is undergoing cancer treatment. Here, he is pictured with Queen Camilla at Sandringham last month
It was not the first time we have seen the Princess of Wales alone on a bench. Here Diana poses outside the Taj Mahal on a 1992 visit to India as her marriage was collapsing
The video was given front-page billing in Argentina, Ecuador, Brazil, and Uruguay.
It also appeared further north in Mexico, Costa Rico, and Honduras.
In the Middle East it was reported in Israel, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates and in the Far East in Japan, Singapore and Malaysia.
And that is quite aside from the big headlines it attracted in Commonwealth countries, as you might expect, and in most of Western Europe including France, Germany, Spain, Belgium and Switzerland.
Why? Undoubtedly the drama of the video announcement, a bolt from the blue, made a difference.
There has also been a determination on the part of the royals to appear 'relatable', more open, less stuffy.
Even so, the scale of the interest in Catherine must surely have gone beyond what even their advisers would have expected.
These are uncharted waters - and it is no wonder the Waleses are concerned
Previous generations of royalty went to enormous lengths to protect their privacy, of course.
The true extent of George VI’s battle with cancer was kept, not just from the public, but from his family and even the king himself.
The unusual good health of Elizabeth II throughout most of her life meant such revelations were unnecessary in her case. For many decades, the Windsors' luck was in.
Traditionally it has been royal births, marriages, deaths and the pageantry of jubilees or coronations that
