What should the Royals talk about?

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As Catherine, Princess of Wales, continues her gradual return to the public side of her role after chemotherapy for cancer, she offered words of support for those who have addictions.

"Everyone suffering from addiction is another human being, with a story of their own, which many of us don't understand or see," she said in a message Friday marking Addiction Awareness Week in the United Kingdom.

"It is not our place to judge or criticize. We must take the time to sit by someone's side, learning the values of love and empathy. Being a shoulder to cry on or an ear to listen, these simple acts of kindness are crucial in breaking down the misunderstandings that so many face."

Sharing that kind of royal interest in a current issue in the U.K. might be something some in that country would like to hear more of, at the same time as some might be content to hear less about the Royals' personal lives.

Out of a recent poll by Ipsos for The Daily Telegraph, the newspaper highlighted how two in five respondents said they would like to see members of the Royal Family speak more about social issues, promote charitable causes and attend small public engagements.

Almost as many, Ipsos said, "would like to see them spend less or no time speaking about political topics and doing interviews about their personal lives."

For the poll, Ipsos conducted telephone interviews with 1,089 adults aged 18 to 75 across Great Britain from Nov. 8-11. 

Trying to decipher what might lie behind those views and how they were reported leads down a multitude of paths, whether it might be how members of the Royal Family have been communicating with the public in the last few years or how reports of what they say and do are set against the social and economic climate of the day.

"Perhaps there hasn't been this much personal detail [about members of the Royal Family] being discussed by the public since the 1990s, when there was the breakdown of the marriages of three of [Queen Elizabeth's] four children," Carolyn Harris, a Toronto-based royal author and historian, said in an interview.

Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, had a high-profile and controversial interview with Oprah Winfrey after they stepped back from official royal duties. They also did a docuseries for Netflix, and Harry released his memoir, Spare.

And this could mean that given "the sheer scale of different interviews and revelations that have taken place … this reaches a saturation point and it's clear the public are ready to move on to other things," Harris said.

This also comes at a time of strife in the United Kingdom, where strain over the cost of living is ever-present.

"The economic crisis and with Labour coming into power and the new budget … [Chancellor] Rachel Reeves has put out the new budget and it's quite tough. And so things are going to get worse," said Chandrika Kaul, a professor of modern history at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, in an interview.