>>17796059 (OP)They really did not know how to manage their popular perception among the colonials.
Hell, if they had just asked the local governments to raise taxes for the good of the empire instead of unilaterally imposing them, there wouldn't have been a revolution. The 1700s were a time where the colonies were growing closer in culture and identity to Great Britain, and most colonials took pride in the rights they were guaranteed as Englishmen.
But time and time again the British showed the colonials that not only were they not Englishmen, but that the crown and parliament they revered outright despised them.
During the war actions such as stealing from colonial's homes for provisions, occasional raping of colonial women, the liberation of the slaves of rebellious colonials, allying with the native tribes who had been the long-standing enemy of the colonials, treating all American POWs as traitors and leaving them to die slowly of disease on prison ships (even when they were children) and a long line of other abuses by the British made more and more people support the continentals, dooming the royal control over the 13 colonies.