Hot news from Germany: the Queen is about to abdicate to make way for Prince William. “A world sensation,” says the cover of Frau mit Herz (Woman with Heart), the weekly that broke the story.

“The Queen will flabbergast her subjects with this wide-reaching decision.” The Prince of Wales, we are told, took the news “as pale as chalk. He left the Palace without saying a word.”

The story is only the latest concoction — albeit the most daring in its use of fictional narrative — in a country that has become obsessed with British royalty.

More than a dozen weekly magazines with titles such as Neue Welt, Frau Aktuell and Neue Post have been spinning a fantasy world about Buckingham Palace for Germans enthralled by the magic of kingship. Every week an estimated nine million here absorb the nuggets from unnamed courtiers, and though few admit to buying the magazines, the stories inform the conversation at hairdressers and sausage counters across the country.

“We all grow up with fairytales where princes and princesses play a major role,” says Rolf Seelmann-Eggebert, for many years the royal expert for the ARD state television channel. “And then we get older and think, oh, they really exist. So the curiosity remains and the need to be informed grows.”

The Germans have lived under a republican system since the Kaiser abdicated in 1918. The aristocrats have not disappeared — the Association for Nobility reckons that up to 80,000 people in Germany have titles of some sort — but there is little glamour attached to them. A reality television series featuring the search of four counts to find commoner wives merely reinforced the idea that German aristos were rather dull.

The closest Germany comes to celebrity princedom is Prince Ferfried of Hohenzollern (recently ordered to perform social work because of his failure to pay a debt) and Prince Ernst August of Hanover (currently contesting a claim that he used a knuckleduster to beat a disco-owner). But nothing trumps the British Royal Family for reminding the Germans what they might have had had they not been on the losing side of the First World War.

The editor of Frau mit Herz, Ingeborg Wagle-Kaul, was not available yesterday to take calls or reply to e-mails. It is, therefore, unclear as to how she intends to follow up the abdication story next week. The sourcing of the story — “British aristocracy experts” — also remains a little vague for a world sensation. The sources seem to know though that the Queen is working on her abdication speech. “The news has not yet been officially confirmed,” the magazine says, “but when it is, it will hit Britain with the force of a bomb.” A photograph shows the Queen delivering a speech in Westminster Hall. “Is this where the Queen will deliver her abdication speech?” the magazine asks.

“This is a picture-driven business,” an editor at one of the royalty mags said. “We get the photos in, not just the British but from almost every royal house. Then we look at the facial expressions, the body language, work out when the picture was snapped and discuss why they have such sour faces. Have they just had an argument? Why? We put two and two together. We’re not pulling the wool over our readers’ eyes.”

From this point of view Germany’s overimaginative royal-watching is akin to Kremlinology — an attempt to make sense of a mysterious world. But some royal houses are losing their patience. When they started to speculate about the Swedish royal couple getting a divorce (“Will a millionaire kiss away Queen Silvia’s tears?”), the Swedish court hired a Hamburg media lawyer. The legal team found 1,558 misrepresentations of the Swedish Royal Family on 500 front pages. “Certain German magazines, the so-called gossip press, have published very skewed stories, completely without basis in fact, for quite some time,” Morgan Gerle, a court spokesman, said. The Norwegian court has protested, too. The financial settlements are not huge — usually tens of thousands of euros — but they are starting to make a dent in the coffers of the publishers.

So the House of Windsor, which does not sue, is making the running. This week’s stories include: “Camilla falls off the wagon, Charles shocked” (Frau Aktuell), “Prince Harry bitterly disappointed by his fiancée” (Neue Welt), “Camilla shows true face and bans Kate!” (Sieben Tage), “Is Chelsy cheating on Prince Harry?”(Neue Post).

Some also carry a marital breakdown in the Danish Royal Family, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands changing her will and a seriously ill princess in Spain.

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