It's also a way to keep themselves relevant in our current society. A generation ago, the Queen was part of many world changing events and her family was held in high regard (whether it was warranted or not is another argument). No matter how you felt about them, 30-40 years ago, the Royal family was a major institution in our world. It was something people a generation or two ago thought was a normal part of life and necessary.

Now, no one cares ... all they mostly see is a bunch of rich wealthy people that think they are somehow important because they happened to be born or married into a certain family. No one associates the Royal family any more to anything relevant to anyone's life. Look at King Charles, it was hilarious to see him discuss and make comments about poverty in one of his first speeches .... from a golden jewel encrusted throne!

So any time I see Royal family headlines, it just stupid to me ... they are no longer relevant and them begging for attention is just them shouting at everyone to treat them like we all once did decades ago.

No offense but how old are you? Because this is nothing new. They have been plastering the UK royals across magazine covers for my entire life and I'm 40 this year.

As for the why... my theory is that the British monarchy (like it or not) is a part of western heritage and history, they have impacted more of the worlds cultures (for better or worse) than not. They certainly arent as relevant to power as they once were but as a lineage they are part of our collective history and having them be pseudo celebrities that we are constantly keeping tabs on gives us a sense of continuity and like everything is going to be ok. Theres plenty of cultures out there keeping really bigoted ideas alive out of "tradition", "history" and "culture"... by comparison suffering some tabloid stories on rich white people doesnt seem that bad.

Everything? It all kinda sucks right now and anyone "in charge" is either shrieking about it being the end of the world or pretending that everything is fine. I'm not surprised that every attempt is being made to distract people at any opportunity.

I guess for every moment I spend contemplating the possibility of Kate Middleton getting a Brazilian butt lift and sitting around badly photoshopping family photos and being generally mysterious not appearing in public,

those are the moments I haven't spent panicking about how I'm going to survive when I'm getting paid less than life costs,

moments that I haven't spent wondering why USA keeps giving money to other countries but not helping our own citizens who were born and work here,

moments that I haven't spent wondering why there are wars going on in the world that don't need to be happening,

There are all kinds of things people want to distract you from. Genocide, wealth inequality, destruction of the environment, you name it.

It's not really any different than the usual nonsense that's always percolating through corporate media, there's nothing special or unique about it. Maybe you are being a little paranoid? The royals always get outsized media coverage, there's a whole media ecosystem built up around them for multiple generations now. This particular story hits a few key buttons that lend themselves to more coverage than your typical royal drama so it's really blown up as it drags on. I wouldn't read too much into it except that you might need to better curate your feed.