King Salman's arrest warrant came after hundreds of thousands had already viewed the videos online, spreading it under an Arabic hashtag that can be translated as “prince transgresses on citizens.”

The wide online circulation of the clips put pressure on the country's leadership to prosecute the prince, Saud bin Abdulaziz bin Musaed bin Saud bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, especially because Salman had previously emphasized that he generally considers citizens’ rights to be of higher value than the protection of royals' privileges.

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Although Saudi princes receive a monthly allowance and hold a special status, they can be prosecuted by courts. The most serious reminder that royals may be privileged but not sacrosanct came in October when one prince was executed after being found guilty of fatally shooting a man in 2013.

In his arrest order Wednesday, Salman urged Saudis to report other possible cases of abuse of power to authorities.

As governor of Riyadh between 1963 and 2011, he reportedly oversaw the prosecution of royals who had broken the law and acted as a referee in family disputes. His private jail, on his palace grounds, was believed to be specifically reserved for princes. At the time, there appeared to be few royals interested in pursuing the prosecution of members of the royal family, apart from the governor. “Who else was going to discipline a prince?” Robert Lacey, a British author who has written extensively about the Saudi royal family, told my colleague Kevin Sullivan in 2015. “Salman has great authority within the family. He is beloved and feared.”

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Amid reports of infighting in the Saudi royal family, Salman has recently attempted to cement his power despite a potentially gloomy economic outlook and geopolitical woes. Since he became king more than two years ago, the Saudi leader has fired several senior officials for misbehavior caught on camera.

But some of his critics wonder whether the same scrutiny is applied when there are no cameras and no clips emerge online.

The Saudi prince's arrest came the same week a young woman was arrested by authorities in the country after a video showed her wearing a short skirt and a top that revealed her midriff. Such attire is taboo in Saudi Arabia, where women are required to cover themselves in public with a loosefitting cloak. The woman's subsequent arrest triggered global outrage, and officials announced Wednesday that she had been released without charges.

Meanwhile, Salman's order the same day to arrest Prince Saud specified that neither he nor his accomplices should be released before the end of their trial.

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Despite Saudi attempts to calm critics in both cases, the two widely discussed arrests this week revealed some of the deep divisions that have long run through Saudi society. Whereas religious hard-liners welcomed the young woman's arrest, others condemned it as backward and inconsequential — given that Saudi women traveling abroad sometimes also do not cover themselves in public.

And whereas the Saudi prince's arrest has been widely praised in Saudi Arabia, it has also raised questions over the origins of the sense of superiority and being above the law that have been repeatedly displayed by some royals.