#ch.julian

In truth, the family’s practice of mourning varied enough to warrant a white lie to the public. Some did indeed take the traditional approach. Rodrigo, Matias, and Leonor all sequestered themselves away to a degree; they engaged in that esteemed “true reflection” with only their selves and their memories as company. For others, the dictates of tradition mattered less. Their mourning looked like clinging to routine, revisiting familiar places, seeking comfort in the presence of others. Beatriz returned to Yaas for the first time in years, welcoming for once the way her childhood haunted it. Contemplation could find its way into these activities—in the tranquil baking Olalla did or the letters Mateo wrote to his father—but not everyone was willing to allow it. They formed a spectrum in their grief, one that none policed or much noticed.

TRANSCRIPT:

[Overlapping conversations.]

German: Silly ones next! Obligatory.

Julian: Can we talk—now, just … before everything starts?

Yesenia: [Sighs.] Two minutes.

Julian: Start the clock. I can sweep you off your feet in a minute and a half. Yesenia: Julian, please—

Julian: I’ve done it before. Yesenia: If this is what you want to talk about, forget it. Let’s go inside.

Julian: Marcos is here, isn’t he? Yesenia: I don’t think that matters.

Julian: Me either. He knows what he signed himself up for, with us. Yesenia: Us? Come on. Julian: [Doing a poor Beatriz impression] “When we have history, we share stitches.” Yesenia: It’s not happening again.

Yesenia: I’m in Nakawe until tomorrow, and I’m going abroad after that. I’m not getting stuck with you. Whatever is happening with Marcos is not your concern. I said two minutes, and I meant it. This is over.

Julian: I know it’s serious. Yesenia: Excuse me? Julian: I can’t even hate him. He’s the good cousin. He’s just, like, good. So are you. Yesenia: Are those tears…? Julian: It’s called desperation, Yesenia.

Beatriz: They’re doing this in front of everyone? Leonor: So it appears.

Beatriz: If we wanted drama, I would have hired someone with talent.

social media is not really a subset of public relations for the royal family—like, it is, but it's also its own entity. there are certainly public accounts that are maintained principally by employees of the crown, but my sense is that they would've had an entire strategic plan for Influencing™ in the early 2010s when it was solidifying as a concept. the crown, as a governmental institution, has had its own approach to social media since perhaps 2006-2008 primarily concerned with policy communication and public engagement. the royal family, as a sort of related cultural apparatus, attends to the popular interests of performance and spectacle—different kinds of persuasion.

this makes sense in the broader context of beatriz's personal vision of how their family remains relevant: she had already made the decision to lean hard into the wave of celebrity and entertainment journalism that came to shape, then define, the 1990s and 2000s. part of it was her willingness to engage with outlets less deferential to the crown—whether as an appreciator of tabloid gossip's function in society or as a private participant in the kind of combative exchanges that maintain popular public interest. part of it was having the foresight to exploit the adventures and popularity of her many grandchildren: there are ten of them, and they all came of age in the 1990s and 2000s; they all appealed to different swaths of the public; and they surrounded themselves with other interesting figures who'd be in the news with or without the royal association. entertainment becomes a public service, alongside but separate from the royal family's substantive patronage system.

in short, beatriz has been a real "all publicity is good publicity" kind of person, and that has shaped both the crown's official strategies and the family's approach to self-presentation. the latter has been thoroughly central to celebrity culture for some time and that has included appropriating social media for their own purposes. social media allows a new level of control for people who had previously been subject to processes controlled by newspaper and magazine editors, television producers, and a cadre of popular bloggers. with the advent and maturity of social media, the celebrity mystique seems to be a relic of the past, but parasocial interactions have taken on a new, powerful shape. the active use of social media by the family, then, is a way to compete with mediated press coverage and maintain their place in the broader national celebrity culture.

while beatriz herself does not maintain any private accounts or have much interest in participating in the management of her public one, it is essentially imperative that the family's working royals have public accounts with regular, personalized posts. they have staff for this who are separate from staff working on other forms of communications. the actual shape of these public accounts depends on the person. take barbie, for example: the social media mandate, for her, is fully a call to influence. her public account is personal the way lifestyle accounts tend to be; she's presenting her life, her marriage, and her children in a manner that is, not attainable, but unprecedentedly accessible. as another example, i imagine arnaut's social media presence is sort of like barack obama's has been. he and his team make statement posts about issues and current events, and he also releases reading lists and year-end playlists and things like that. leonor's posts tend to be polished, professional, and work-related, but she also posts videos of herself discussing events while she's getting ready for them.

the question of private personal accounts is interesting ... i imagine the younger members of the family do have them, although that raises the question of whether they're being monitored and moderated to prevent or manage leaks, etc. at the same time, they have such broad latitude with their public accounts that i don't imagine they'd need private accounts to post the kinds of content most people put on instagram and such. in theory, i feel like there's an approval process that means adults have to consent to having their accounts monitored and, for minors, puts the monitoring responsibility on their parents. julian, for example, has private personal accounts he uses exclusively to keep up with what his son is posting. obviously the teens would all have private snapchat accounts, but why would you make a finsta for fucking around if you're contractually obligated to have your dad follow it ksdjfhsg