King Charles Is Dead Rumor Goes Viral On X; Poster Says 'Don't Take This Seriously'

A false rumor that King Charles is dead has gone viral on social media amid the speculation surrounding his daughter-in-law, Kate Middleton.

On Sunday, King Charles, who was diagnosed with cancer earlier this year, became a trending topic on X, formerly Twitter, after unverified rumors began circulating that he passed away over the weekend, possibly on St. Patrick's Day.

"THE STREETS ARE SAYING KING CHARLES IS DEAD???" X user @kimichkis tweeted.

The user wrote in a follow-up post: "Flags at half mast in some government buildings, [BBC] going all black again, going also on stand by for [an] imminent 'big' royal announcement, either King Charles is dead, abdicating, or Kate died."

However, another X user refuted these claims, writing, "The BBC News channel is still in red. Some half-mast flag pics have been taken from the time of [Queen Elizabeth II's] death, and so nothing is official yet."

The original poster clarified that the rumor about King Charles was unconfirmed and asked others not to take it seriously. However, the user claimed that there may be a major announcement related to the royal family coming this week.

"Don't take this seriously," @kimichkis wrote in all caps. "The only confirmed thing is that the BBC has a royal announcement for tomorrow."

While there is no truth to the rumors that King Charles has died, this did not stop tens of thousands of X users from sharing their two cents about it.

"King Charles seeing why he's trending on Twitter," one person wrote alongside a clip of a woman looking shocked.

Another posted an edited version of the Mother's Day photo Middleton shared earlier this month with King Charles' face superimposed on the princess'.

"Buckingham Palace just released this photo of King Charles," the user joked, seemingly poking fun at Middleton's photo editing scandal. "He is certainly not dead; he is alive and well."

"The Royal Family showing everyone that King Charles is in fact alive and well and defiantly not dead in a box somewhere," another person wrote alongside a clip from "Toy Story."

Some suggested that the monarchy's refusal to share details about Middleton's whereabouts only fueled the conspiracy theories surrounding the royal family.

"All the secrecy only leads to wild conspiracy theories," one user wrote.

This comes just a day after Kyle Marisa Roth, who shares pop culture and royal family blind items on TikTok and is followed by over 620,000 people, cited two unnamed sources "from the BBC" as claiming that there was a "super-injunction" on a major piece of news coming from the royal family.

She explained in a TikTok video that this meant no news outlets could report the news before they got the green light from the royal family's communications team.

Roth claimed one source told her that "the same exact thing happened" with Queen Elizabeth II's death in 2022 and "the Prince Andrew situation." The TikToker did not specify which news about the Duke of York her source referred to but claimed that the press knew about the information months before it was made public.

Roth said no other detail about this alleged announcement from the royal family was disclosed but claimed that one of her sources reportedly said that there were "certain rumors that are repeating on TikTok, particularly in [her] posts, that are not rumors."

Roth also claimed that one of the sources told her the news could break Wednesday "at the latest."

Roth had discussed several topics about the royal family on her account over the past few weeks, including Middleton's absence from the public eye, Prince William and the resurfacing of rumors that he allegedly had an affair with Rose Hanbury.

Meanwhile, King Charles was seen publicly Wednesday when the Daily Mail captured a video of him smiling and waving to royal fans from his car in England.

The monarch has made other appearances since Buckingham Palace announced in January that he was diagnosed with an undisclosed form of cancer and had begun undergoing treatment.

In early February, he was photographed walking to St Mary Magdalene's church on his Sandringham estate.

According to CNN, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said around that time that King Charles' cancer was "caught early."