United Kingdom (Commonwealth Union)_ The double health announcements from the United Kingdom’s royal family on the Princess of Wales’ abdominal surgery and King Charles III ‘s prostate treatment have put a spotlight on the private lives of senior royals.
Details of royal health are always a tricky issue in the United Kingdom because members of the monarchy are private individuals but also, in a sense, public property. King Charles, 75, is head of state, and Princess Catherine, 42, is destined to be queen when her husband Prince William succeeds his father on the throne.
The brief media statements on the health scares were so unusual that they dominated newspaper front pages on Thursday, with headlines calling them “royal health bombshells.”
The disclosure of Charles’ and Kate’s health details was perceived by some royal observers as a sign that the monarchy is adapting to modern communications after centuries of staying tight-lipped about health matters.
On Wednesday, Royal officials announced that Kate had undergone “planned” abdominal surgery and was expected to remain in The London Clinic, a private hospital, for 10 to 14 days and was not expected to resume public duties until April.
Though she has generally experienced good health and is seen as fit and sporty, Princess Catherine was hospitalized during her pregnancies because of severe morning sickness.
Prince William also has postponed some official duties so that he can devote time to his wife and their three children. The Prince of Wales visited his wife on Thursday, and British media reported that the Princess of Wales was “doing well.”
Soon after the announcement of Kate’s hospitalization, Buckingham Palace said that King Charles will undergo a “corrective procedure” for an enlarged prostate next week. Queen Camilla said Thursday that King Charles was “fine” and “looking forward to getting back to work.”
When U.K. monarchs had real power, news of their illness was withheld for fear it might weaken their authority. After royals became constitutional figureheads, the habit of secrecy lingered.
The British public was not informed that Charles’ grandfather, King George VI, had lung cancer before his death in February 1952 at the age of 56, and some historians have claimed that the king himself wasn’t told he was terminally ill. The public death announcement only said that the king had “passed peacefully away in his sleep.”
King George V, his father, died in 1936 after suffering from heart and lung disease. Diary extracts were published half a century later, revealing that the king’s physician had injected the terminally ill monarch with morphine and cocaine to speed his death, partly so it could be announced in the morning newspapers “rather than the less appropriate evening journals.”
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Princess Catherine in hospital for surgery
The UK and global media have been focused on the health of Britain’s senior royals in recent years as the late Queen Elizabeth II faded from public view during the last months of her 70-year reign. Few specific details were released even then, about the late monarch’s condition. The public was only informed that the Queen was suffering from mobility issues while the cause of her death in September 2022 at the age of 96 was listed on the death certificate simply as old age.
Wednesday’s announcements provided more details than the public would have expected in the past.
Some royal experts said that while the latest statement on Princess Catherine was coy and shrouded in some secrecy, the one on King Charles showed that the monarch was keen to try a new and more open kind of communication.
Owens added that releasing the news about both royals on the same day was also about news management. While Princess Catherine’s condition sounded more serious, the King’s can be seen as a positive news story to complement a more complicated one in the case of Princess Catherine’s health,” he said.
While King Charles’s condition wasn’t worrying, the announcements that the monarch, Kate and William would all be out of action in one way or another in the coming days did lead to bigger questions about what happens to matters of state in more serious cases.
This is especially of interest because King Charles presides over a much more slimmed-down monarchy than his predecessors, with only four royals under 65 years old : William, Kate, Charles’s younger brother Prince Edward and his wife Sophie.
