A couple days ago someone pointed me to a story on Facebook that some British royal treasures had been ‘retrieved’ from one of her residences, in what sounds like a pre-dawn sort of emergency raid that involved Prince William having to helicopter in to personally assist with it. With heavy implications that while collecting the items they had paperwork to seize, they saw a bunch of other stuff that was likewise considered to be royal/government property that wasn’t on their paperwork so they couldn’t touch it. Also implied: the stuff had been intended to be secretly sold/shipped out of the country; that similar shipments were suspected to have happened earlier; that the Queen was clearly involved; and so forth.
But I saw no mention at all of this elsewhere. I mean, zippo, on television news or newspapers or anything … and you’ve got to think this is the sort of thing that would drive reporters into frenzies. So I figured it was just some wacko airing a conspiracy theory that everyone else knew was nonsense.
But just a couple days later the Queen is sort of , side lined? And clearly against her will?
Yeah. @StarvingButStrong, do you have any actual links to these stories? I agree, this all sounds like BS, if there’s not a whiff of it in the legit press.
Yeah, they use a picture of Rachel Maddow in the still that accompanies the video, in a clear (but lame) attempt to convince potential viewers that there’s something legit there, but this is all purely clickbait.
And she’s not even shown in the actual video, which, as @Lord_Feldon notes, is just an AI voice on top of a bunch of videos and photos, at least some of which appear to be AI-generated.
I skimmed through the video:
It leads off with a disclaimer page, which starts “The content in this video is for entertainment and informational purposes only,” and later says, “Its claims are not presented as definitive truths,” and “the material may contain unconfirmed allegations, subjective viewpoints, and discussions of reported occurrences that should not be regarded as factual.” Sooooo…they flat-out tell you, “we make no claim that any of this is, indeed factual.”
At 0:18, it says, “news anchors across Britain and America broke the story” that this was announced at “exactly 10:14 am on October 18th, 2025.” Which is all apparently complete bullshit, as the OP can’t find any other verification of this.
Perhaps start by assuming anything you find from any non-traditional source = not the Big 3 networks or Reuters is not trustworthy. Then if, and only if, you find corroboration from a trustworthy source, then consider maybe paying attention to the crap you find on your inherently non-trustworthy feeds.
Yesterday I received an email from my Dem congressman about the ongoing government shutdown. Trustworthy source. Today I received an email from one of my Republican senators. Completely untrustworthy source that sounded as if they were living on a different planet from the email yesterday. Because they are.
I’ve seen (but not opened) Reels on my FB feed with screaming headlines about the royals. I assume they’re from the same “sources” as the ones you’ve mentioned. They all feel like National Enquirer fodder, just from the headlines that I scanned in passing.
As an aside, it is disturbing how AI has invaded the “news.” Not the obvious nonsense like Trump in the jet, but seemingly accurate but bogus reports that can be exposed with just a little searching - knowing most people won’t search.
agree completely with your first paragraph. Your second paragraph is absurd. Bottom line is you should verify EVERYTHING you read or hear, regardless of the source.
My husband watches YouTube on TV, and sees all kinds of crap that he then takes in and makes part of his world view. The other day I saw a bit of one of these stories that he was watching, and I asked what was going on, and he said “Yeah, she’s not queen any more.” That seemed surprising and big news, so I proceeded to Google what I could find out. All I got were stories from when Charles upgraded her title to full queen (whatever the technical terms are, I don’t care enough to check) and no recent news at all, let alone scandals. I did tell him, both that there were no facts behind the story and that it was pure BS, and his reaction was “oh, really?” and I let it drop.
The opening blurb in the posted video mentions “entertainment and informational purposes only.” That blurb appears for only a tiny fraction of a second.
Fact and fiction are increasingly hard to distinguish these days, though both make way for ads. Is there even such a thing as a useful search engine these days? (Excluding Groogle, Bling and Quack-quack). Lately I resort to ChatGPT: Is that like preferring the fire to the frying pan?
Welcome to the end of Western Civilization. – (I wish I was being sarcastic.)
There’s no truth to any of it, otherwise the BBC would have been all over it like a rash. Camilla did take a step back from royal duties but that was last year when she’d been taking on some extra things because Charlie was having cancer treatment.
There’s your problem, right there. Get down to the bottom of the “reels”, and there’s some seriously odd AI-slop clickbait. Of course it’s nonsense - it’s on Facebook.
