After King Charles’ shocking cancer diagnosis earlier this year—detected after a routine prostate procedure at The London Clinic on January 26—friends of his wife Queen Camilla said they “had never seen her so worried,” according to The Daily Mail’s Rebecca English.
English added that Camilla’s worry was “Not because the King’s prognosis was particularly bad, it should be stressed, but because on a human level, cancer is such a genuinely terrifying prospect for both patients and their partners,” English wrote.
According to a source speaking to English, “When she visited His Majesty in hospital after he first went in for prostate surgery, she was quite relaxed,” they said. “Concerned, of course, but it was a pretty standard procedure and there was actually quite a bit of laughter at his bedside.”
But, just three or four days later, the couple were told that cancer had been detected. They spent the weekend together at Sandringham processing the news privately, and publicly announced the diagnosis on Monday, February 5—though, to this day, the type and stage of Charles’ cancer has not been made public.
Despite the devastating news, Camilla—who turned 77 years old yesterday—insisted on going ahead with a planned royal engagement to open a Maggie’s cancer care center in London while Charles began treatment. “The public had no idea what she was going through,” a friend said. “She was speaking to patients, survivors, and even the families of those who had lost their lives to this awful disease in front of the cameras. And she couldn’t—she didn’t even blink. That takes serious guts.”
Another friend told English that “In private, people had never seen her so worried. Forget who they are for a second. Look at it from a human level. Her beloved husband was facing a very serious condition. The battle of his life. It was hugely tough.”
But, English wrote, “after a brief wobble, she pulled herself together.” Camilla—“always a prolific letter writer,” English added—began to sign off in letters with the phrase “Onwards and upwards!” which was “a clear indicator of how she planned to tackle this new crisis head-on,” English wrote.
As Charles continues to battle cancer, Camilla has become his fierce protector: “His Majesty is never one to sit still and do nothing,” a person who knows both Charles and Camilla well told English. “He always wants to work and even cancer wasn’t going to stop him. But it’s fair to say that his wife hasn’t always been of the same opinion.” They added “There is really only one voice in the room that he listens to. And that’s not the doctors. She is the only person who can persuade him that he needs to pace himself in order to recover, and she’s pretty firm when she has to be. She’s definitely put her foot down as much as she could in recent months.”
Poignantly, they added “They have always been a team, but now you couldn’t get a cigarette paper between them.”
Camilla spent her birthday yesterday alongside Charles at the State Opening of Parliament, which a close friend told English is “not the tip-top way she would choose to be spending her birthday, but you won’t ever hear a single word of complaint. About anything, really. For someone who wasn’t born into the royal family, she’s got an extraordinarily strong sense of duty and the temperament to cope.”
