About

Dancing Prince Charles is a photoshop meme based on a photograph of the British royal Prince Charles doing a jig during a round of Parachute game at the Diamond Jubilee celebration of Queen Elizabeth II held on July 19th, 2012.

Origin

On July 19th, 2012, Prince Charles and Camilla visited a youth festival for the Queen's Diamond Jubilee at Saumarez Park in St. Peter Port, Channel Islands. While attending the event, Charles partook in a round of Parachute games and even showed off a jig, which was captured on camera by journalists and reporters.^[1][2]

  

On July 21st, B3ta forum member chthonic started a thread titled "Photoshop Prince Charles"^[3] with an exploitable cutout of Prince Charles doing the jig and challenged other members to create and share their own photoshopped versions using the image.

Spread

Chthonic's image challenge thread was soon met by positive reception from other members on B3ta, an online community known for its large British members, and dozens of photoshopped derivatives began to populate the thread. Throughout the last week of July, more than 140 contributions were posted to the B3ta forum thread. On July 21st, Redditor Less_than_5 submitted a link to the photograph of Prince Charles dancing with Camila at the Jubilee event in a post titled "Prince Charles can't go unscathed,"^[8] generating dozens of additional derivatives in the comments section. On July 29th, Redditor Juri777 submitted the exploitable image of Prince Charles in a post titled "Prince Charles,"^[10] further amplifying B3ta's photoshop challenge with more than 11,400 upvotes and 150 comments. On July 30th, The Daily Dot^[4] showcased a notable collection of examples from the B3ta forum thread in an article titled "Prince Charles becomes a royal meme."

Notable Examples

Chubby Bubbles Girl

In early August, London resident Philip Normal^[7] tweeted a mash-up image of the Chubby Bubble Girl with Prince Charles photoshopped into the background. The image quickly spread across Twitter and Tumblr in the following days, eventually getting picked up by The Atlantic in a short article titled "Sorry Guys, Prince Charles Never Chased a Girl with a Pot of Bubbles."^[6]

External References