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Prince William and Princess Kate in October 2023
Photo: Andy Rain / EPA
Her eyes look tired, her voice wobbles briefly but doesn't crack. The short video, posted on the royal social media channels, shows Catherine, Princess of Wales, sitting on a garden bench and explaining why she had withdrawn from the public eye since January. That not only had she had an abdominal operation, as officially announced by the palace, and has been recovering from this procedure since then, but that she was also currently undergoing preventative chemotherapy after the said operation surprisingly revealed worrying findings.
“I will be okay,” she assured her three children, Catherine says in the video and now uses these words again to tell the whole world and ultimately herself: everything will be okay again.
The fact that Catherine made her health concerns public in this way on Friday basically has nothing to do with the increasingly screaming, invasive speculation about her condition and the reason for her absence, a classically nameless palace insider is quoted in some media.
The Princess had always intended to share more details about her health with the public, but she wanted to wait until she had ideally fully recovered in order to leave no room for speculation about her chances of recovery. And to protect George, Charlotte and Louis, to spare them the horror and fear for their mother.
The only bit of private protection left
The main reason why Catherine published the video, according to leaked information, is that her children now have the Easter holidays and can therefore spend at least a while at home in a safe space in order to at least be able to process the initial shock without the rudeness of the outside world.
The fact that Catherine doesn't specify which surgical procedure and what type of cancer was involved is the only bit of private protection she has left at this moment.
When reality triumphs over the wildest fiction
King Charles III made it publicly known that he was very proud of his “beloved daughter-in-law” for now publicly sharing her diagnosis. Both share a medical history that is almost uncanny in its parallels, which makes them sound suspiciously fictional to people who don't know that reality can always triumph over the wildest fiction: Charles also had a planned, official procedure in the same hospital as Kate in January Underwent surgery that was expressly not cancer-related, after which cancer was diagnosed when the tissue removed was examined.
Both dealt with this finding differently, based on their personal feelings, as every person should be allowed to do, and perhaps also in accordance with their respective image: The king made his cancer public, had himself photographed opening recovery greeting cards and posed with a copy which shows a dog undergoing surgery: At least you don't have to wear a plastic funnel, that's what the sign says.
And Charles showed himself to the public whenever possible, waving from his Bentley with the extra-large windows to show: there was no need to worry. The king showed weakness and gained sympathy because he made himself approachable.
The princess, on the other hand, has to appear strong in public because the monarch and the entire royal construct no longer have much to rely on. After the family's available personnel had been decimated by total moral failures and freedom-seeking moves, William as the coming king and Catherine as the future queen are more than ever in a stabilizing duty at the moment of Charles's weakness. Especially when people doubt whether Königs is really still needed these days.
But regardless of her role as an always reliable, unshakable and, on the outside, almost superhumanly infallible Future Queen, Catherine, as a no-matter royal person, of course has every right to be sick without being excluded from the public - how absurd it sounds to even have to emphasize that.
Simplistic marketing bunglers
One would have wished she had much better PR support last week. Or at least not completely clumsy marketing bunglers who would have saved them from publishing the disastrous, edited Mother's Day photo that created the worst of the fuss. Why Kate not only has to come to terms with her medical diagnosis, but also publicly expose herself to ridicule as a clumsy amateur photo manipulator, is also a highly puzzling PR decision.
Now one might think that Catherine's explanation would bring some calm back into the issue. That all the amateur detectives on social media could finally relax again and open their windows because they can now assume that William didn't miss the memorial service for his godfather King Constantine II because he was his cousin's husband had to be murdered, but that he was missing because his wife had received her cancer diagnosis that day, as is now suggested.
One hour until the first doubt is raised
Catherine says in her video that she hopes for understanding, time, space and privacy. The palace also announced that she would probably not attend the family's Easter church visit as previously planned.
It took less than an hour on Friday evening after Catherine's video was published until a doctor was interviewed on the US television channel CNN who questioned her story: Because of the mandatory preliminary examinations, it was highly unlikely that a planned operation would only be carried out during the surgical procedure Surprisingly malignant tumor tissue would be discovered during the procedure.
His extremely self-confident doubts didn't sound really plausible even to medical laypeople, but his statement was immediately reflected as a short clip in a posting on X: The princess's statement was simply another PR disaster, according to the accompanying tweet text.
Another doctor immediately contradicted the X user and the CNN doctor in a comment under the tweet: It is not at all unusual for cancer to be discovered in exactly the same way as Catherine described.
After a few hours, which of these two tweets had more than 11,000 likes and which had 649? You would have liked to be unpleasantly surprised if you hadn't capitulated long ago.