One of the many paradoxes on which a modern monarchy rests is the pomp and reverence accorded to a royal head of state — matched by insatiable nosiness about their personal lives.
The news that the King has an undisclosed form of cancer, serious enough to require immediate treatment, is a vivid example of that contradiction. The King has only recently confirmed treatment for an enlarged prostate (which was, thankfully, benign) when the sobering discovery of another acute ailment was revealed.
Anyone who has had a cancer diagnosis in person or to a close friend or relative will understand the jolting feeling — a mixture of hope, fear and “do they mean me?” incomprehension and an over-arching question about what it means for lifespan and future wellbeing. The King is very fortunate, in terms of his access to care and support. But standing aside from his public duties for “a series of treatments” underlines the gravity of this situation, albeit with the “wholly positive” message he has sent out to calm national nerves allied to reassuring messages from Buckingham Palace about his prognosis.
Shocks to the royal system always bring about change. The first impact of this one will be to remind us that the best laid plans of mice, men and monarchs can be abruptly altered by happenstance. At 75, the King is a robust presence with a vast appetite, as his biographer Robert Hardman puts in, to “get on with it” by shaping the role in his own way after his mother’s long reign and altering priorities, staffing and management of many parts of the Crown estate.
These challenges naturally cascade into the next generation — and that means that the Prince of Wales’s function and focus will also be materially affected by the news of his father’s condition. This is truly a matter of sorrows coming “not as single spies, but as battalions”, as Shakespeare, who knew a bit about palace vicissitudes, penned it.
If the Windsors were a business, analysts would say it has a key vulnerability — but that is what makes it unique
The Waleses are already coping with the princess’s abdominal surgery and the testing task of performing public duties and acting as the modernising faces of the family, while giving their children as grounded an upbringing as possible. William has little choice but to return to a more prominent public role and to be co-executor of his father’s decisions, while being clear that he has his own preferences. If that has been a source of some friction between their teams in the past, it will need to be set aside now.
When people who say that they don’t understand “what the point” of the royals is, one of the “points” that is central is that at the centre of the Firm working royals cannot choose when they step up or down. If a king or queen cannot carry out public duties, someone else has to take them on. It points to one unavoidable structural deficit, namely a dearth of royals for the main roles. The Queen and Princess Anne certainly do their share — and Camilla will do more while her husband is unavailable. But both are in their seventies and there is a limit to what can be asked of their schedules. Essentially, the only figure who can substitute for a King is his heir to the throne, so the balance of duties between the King and William will start to change.
On the subject of the King’s health, questions will surely arise over the balance of discretion and transparency required. I am less than convinced that the semi-transparency approach by the King’s communications team will work as well as it intends. It contrasts too sharply with the refreshing openness over his recent prostate condition and leads to a lot of “Doctor Google” activity, with attempts to read between the lines of the announcement and decode his treatment cycle. It might be prurient, but it is inevitable if there is not fuller disclosure over time.
Everyone has a right to some privacy during a testing treatment. It is however unlikely that the speculation about the illness or its outlook will abate. Adding that to the vagueness about the Princess of Wales’s operation strikes an unsatisfactory balance between the old ways of hushing up any serious medical condition — and giving an incomplete amount of information which is bound to leave us speculating.
There is certainly enough concern for the Duke of Sussex to return at speed from the United States to visit a father from whom he has been estranged for some time — but also the glimmer of hope that there can be some end to a cycle of grievance which made Harry feel treated, as his memoir put it, as a mere “spare” who also believed that his father and brother were “trapped” and “don’t get to leave”.
But really, neither does Harry — because the royal family is its own kind of Hotel California. You can check out if you really try to do so and announce it so often via Netflix, and your spouse is unhappy with the terms of residency, but you cannot leave a royal birth behind. Because it is the main reason anyone from New York to Los Angeles thinks you are important. So this is the inflection moment for a father-son and fraternal relationship too. A personal reconciliation might ultimately lead to a calmer legacy — a dialling-down of Harry’s relentless pursuit of court cases against media outlets and grudge-match with the Home Office over refusal to oversee his family security on UK visits (which are rare and reportedly paid for by his father anyway).
For all the internecine drama, health scares are nature’s way of pointing us to what matters most in life. It means letting go of past discontents and frustrations on all sides — and this is the best chance the royals will get to do that.
It must feel like an unkind blow, less than a year after his coronation, to be suspended from the duties he most relishes. Watching his deft choreography on a trip to Berlin and Hamburg last year, it was plain how much the new King relished working alongside his Queen to maximise the impact of a foreign tour, which was for him a part of the post-Brexit outreach to a European neighbour and the home of family connections he cherishes.
For all the internecine drama, health scares are nature’s way of pointing us to what matters most in life
At home, he has always been the royal with the keenest sense of social engagement: not just in his personal commitments on climate change and the environment, but in the Prince’s Trust, supporting opportunities for under-privileged young people is a fine legacy in many parts of the country.
But big charities need royal patrons and energising forces to embody them — another area in which there are, to be blunt about it, not enough royals to go round and where the enforced retirement of Prince Andrew has left a gap. Much of this needs to be re-thought in a way that can deliver impact where it can be most effective or (as the Princess of Wales has adeptly shown), deploy social media and video assets to create a sense of intimacy, without lashing the core family members to an unreasonable schedule of travel.
If we want a more up-to-date monarchy into the next generations, we also have to allow them time to be modern families with consistent home lives and present parents.
Surely, if the Windsors were a business, analysts would say that it has a key vulnerability built on the absolute primacy of the chief executive, too small a board and too little flexibility in its model. But that is also what makes it unique. It is at the same time a symbol of national constancy and continuity, yet vulnerable to human frailty and misfortune.
Many of us today feel unsettled by the news from the Palace, having grown accustomed to the late Queen as a hale and hearty figure into old age. Suddenly, we are reminded that it is not always this way. Perhaps we worry for the monarch himself, or because this development reminds us of our concerns for our own and family’s futures and wellbeing. Either way, it reminds us that King and country are intertwined. And that is the “point” of it, really.
