I Shouldn't Have Looked at Those Naked Photos of Prince Harry

Prince Harry is a lot like Olympian Ryan Lochte: They're both attractive men with a penchant for doing hotness-destroyingly stupid things, like dressing up as a Nazi for a costume party, or trying to wear a custom grill on the medal platform. So when pictures started circulating this morning of Harry in his altogether after a night of strip pool in Las Vegas, they hit a perfect sweet spot, giving us a chance to check out the royal abs in their fancy suite while wondering exactly how dumb or poorly handled someone that rich has to be to keep landing in absurdly compromising situations. But the leaked photos are also a depressing reminder of how fast the market for compromising photos of the famous has outstripped our ability to consider what parts of people's lives they deserve to keep private. (I'm not linking, but you guys can easily find the photos if you want to.)

Princes Harry and William appear to have a generally more positive relationship with the paparazzi than their mother and her generation did. Princess Diana's back-and-forth with the rags was more complicated than it first appeared in the wake of her death, when photographers were blamed for her Paris car crash. As Tina Brown documented in The Diana Chronicles, Diana was a gossip junkie and enjoyed being photographed as long as she could set the terms of the picture. But that expectation was impossible, and there was no shortage of people willing to help the press invade Diana's life. Among the more notable creeps was Bryce Taylor, the owner of the LA Fitness gym where Diana worked out: He rigged secret cameras to catch her exercising. She sued, and a group of her friends helped her buy the negatives back and obtain an apology. Sarah, the Duchess of York, was caught by the paparazzi topless with an American businessman kissing her feet.

Read more on Slate