Creating a narrative or changing the narrative, both are applicable to the latest vloggers on YouTube. Prince William and Kate Middleton are now YouTubers with their own channel. The young royal couple have dropped a fast-edited clip for their new effort and then went on to upload their first video.

Don’t expect this to be something on the lines of ‘Keeping Up With The Cambridges’ but the couple will keep posting exclusive videos on the site in the coming months. The news of the YouTube channel comes close on the heels of their tenth wedding anniversary and at a time when they continue to take up more public-facing responsibility on behalf of the Queen.

The YouTube channel can also be looked upon as an indirect answer to Prince Harry and his wife Meghan Markle’s growing media empire. Their bombshell interview with Oprah Winfrey has put the royal household under scrutiny as much as it did after the 1995 Princess Diana interview with Martin Bashir.

From the looks of the couple of videos they have uploaded, there seems to be a proper vlogging set up and the production quality is not too bad either. The channel was announced less than 24 hours after Markle announced she will be adding children’s author to her job title. On Instagram the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge captioned their latest move “better late than never”.

It’s not the first time the royal family has tried to connect with the people around them, and not all of them have been a success. In 1969 came the fly-on-the-wall production Royal Family which was quickly forgotten. Then there was the 1994 ITV documentary about Prince Charles, which too wasn’t a roaring success. The Queen launched her own YouTube channel in 2007 to promote the British monarchy.

But the YouTube effort can turn out a recipe for social media success if the communications team at the royal household takes a backseat and allows the couple to go about showcasing a different side to the family. Given the way they function on Instagram, the duo seems to be on the right track. They have close to 13 million followers, which is slightly more than The Duke and Duchess of Sussex, who have recently entered into a partnership with Spotify to come up with podcasts that inspire.