You may have heard about the recent marriage of now former Princess Mako (眞子) with commoner Komuro Kei (小室圭). Mako decided to give up her imperial status, to become a “normal” citizen, and live a new life away from the media, in New York. She declined a 140 million yen payment which the imperial family members normally receive when they leave as a result of the internet backlash she has experienced. Her marriage was regularly criticized and the target of harsh online comments for the last few years, possibly resulting in her developing associated PTSD.
The criticism started after her engagement announcement when it was discovered that Komuro Kei’s mother had financial issues with her former fiancée. It grew over the years along with various other rumors. Some spiteful people even protested on the streets against the marriage itself. In any case, the couple held a short press conference, which afterwards the people seemed generally more understanding and congratulatory.
Gossip aside, what is interesting here within the Japanese linguistic point of view, is the use of the honorific. In Japan, we have different levels of polite language, and it is in the customs to use the honorific language when talking about the imperial family in the media. All the verbs used with the family will be the honorific ones. For example, いらっしゃる (irassharu) instead of 行く/来る/いる (iku/kuru/iru), 召し上がる (meshiagaru) instead of 食べる (taberu), etc. And it is the same about the use of さん (san) and さま (sama).
Although san is used after the nouns to be polite, roughly equivalent to the English “mister, miss, misses,” sama is used in very strict situations for individuals of higher status. Typically, it is used for customers in customer service, and for royalty. Princess Mako was always referred as “Mako-sama” in the news, and now that she is a commoner, she is referred as “Mako-san.” What’s more interesting is that her sister, who is still part of the imperial family, is referred as “Kako-sama.” So you see now this unusual situation, where these two sisters are referred to with different politeness markers within the same NHK article:
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20211026/k10013321691000.html