If you’ve spent even a little time investigating the royal family, you’ll know that there are always a lot of scandals or controversies involving them. However, you will also notice that many of those “scandals” and “controversies” are utter nonsense concocted solely to incite controversy.

A video of someone escaping Buckingham Palace — in their underwear, no less — went viral in 2015. It appears to have regained momentum recently. Some people say there is real video of a young boy fleeing Buckingham Palace. But don’t be bothered. There is a justification for this (although it is a pretty weird one).

This picture of a “little boy” fleeing Buckingham Palace has gone viral yet again.

This image, which you may have seen in your social media feeds, is a screenshot from a video that was originally uploaded to YouTube in 2015. (the video has since been removed from the site). Tourists were apparently waiting outside Buckingham Palace for the changing of the Queen’s Guard when they captured something completely different: a naked man climbing out of the palace window using a bedsheet as a makeshift rope.

But, as it turns out, the video was merely a marketing stunt. The video, according to Variety, was a publicity trick for the premiere of Escripted !’s show The Royals. The display depicts a fictitious version of the British royal family. What better way to raise the show’s success than to stage a false royal scandal? The video did the trick as well, garnering more than 1 million views in a matter of days. But now things have taken a turn for the worse.

In November 2019, a YouTube channel called “Covert Geopolitics” reposted the publicity stunt video, but with a new title: “Child Escaping from Buckingham Palace Naked.” As you would suspect, the “new” video freaked out a lot of people. Despite the fact that it obviously does not depict a boy. And, as previously reported, it was filmed to promote a television program.

Despite the fact that the video had already been debunked and revealed to be a marketing ploy, it continued to frighten some people enough to post about the “little boy’s” “escape” on Twitter. And with that, a five-year-old (fake) controversy was resurrected.

Since Internet conspiracy theories are what they are, the video (and screenshots of it) began to circulate quickly. And almost every time anyone pointed out that the footage was bogus, they were accused of concealing the “truth.” As in most conspiracy theories, some people want to believe the video is true — and that it is of a child (even though it clearly is not).

It can be difficult to sort through all of the conspiracy theories that pop up on the internet. To be honest, the royal family does not have an absolutely spotless record. However, you can be certain that, at least in this instance, with this specific video, there is no larger scandal at work. Oh my goodness!