When Buckingham Palace announced on Monday that King Charles III had been diagnosed with cancer and would be taking a break from public engagements to undergo treatment, it predictably sparked a firestorm of questions.
What kind of cancer? How advanced? What form of treatment? How long would he be out? And the essential, if often unspoken, question when a patient faces a potentially existential health threat: Would he survive?
The palace, surprisingly, fueled this frenzy by revealing more about the king’s medical condition than it had about Queen Elizabeth II or any other previous British monarch. He said he did so at the behest of Charles himself, who wanted to “share his diagnosis to prevent speculation and in the hope that it can help the public’s understanding of all those around the world who have been affected by cancer.” .
Well-intentioned as the king was, the palace’s decision to reveal some facts but not others—the medical equivalent of splitting the curtain in half—raised far more questions than it answered.
Britain is now in an agonizing middle ground, knowing its 75-year-old king has a life-threatening illness but not sure exactly what that means. With treatment, could he live for many more years, as cancer survivors his age often do? Or should the British paint for the death of another sovereign?
This search for road signs in a foggy landscape appeared in remarks by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Tuesday morning. Speaking on BBC Radio 5 Live, Mr Sunak said he was “shocked and saddened” to hear the news about Charles. But then he added: “Fortunately, this happened early.”
These words of encouragement made headlines in the British media. But when reporters pressed the spokesman at 10 Downing Street on what Mr Sunak had based on, they were directed back to the palace’s original statement, which praised the “quick action” of Charles’ medical team.
This four-paragraph document was a tug-of-war between disclosure and omission. The king had “a form of cancer”, he said, which was detected after he was treated for a “benign prostate enlargement”. But the statement did not say what kind. Palace officials clarified to reporters that it was not prostate cancer, which would be the most common cancer detected in a prostate procedure.
With that ruled out, cancer experts advanced other theories. “Lung and bladder cancer are also common in older men,” said Mieke Van Hemelrijck, professor of cancer epidemiology at King’s College London.
Commenters without medical experience dismissed the possibilities: “Lymphoma?” a royal watcher told Sky News on Monday night. The presenter was quick to point out that this was speculation. On Tuesday, Sky interviewed Joan Bakewell, a 90-year-old journalist and House of Lords cancer survivor, about coming to terms with mortality.
Buckingham Palace said it would not issue regular bulletins on the royal’s condition. Palace officials also asked reporters not to try to contact doctors or other professionals treating Charles.
On Tuesday, the British media were content with images of Prince Harry arriving at his father’s London residence, Clarence House, for a visit. Later, a smiling King and Queen Camilla were pictured in a limousine, returning to their Sandringham country home, where Charles was recovering from a prostate procedure until last weekend.
That the palace could expect British tabloids to withdraw from investigating the king’s health confirms the complicated nature of the relationship between the royal family and the press. While much about the royal family is considered fair game by tabloid editors — from their legal travails to their personal lives — there are some matters in which the media is less likely to question the family’s privacy.
That power dynamic was on display late last year when the Dutch edition of a new book on the royals contained the inflammatory claim that Charles and Catherine, Prince William’s wife, had raised concerns about the unborn’s skin colour. child of Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan.
The author, Omid Scobie, insisted the quote had been included by mistake and the Dutch publisher pulled the book from shops – but not before Charles and Catherine’s names were widely circulated on social media.
However, no British news organization published the names until after Piers Morgan, a prominent broadcaster, mentioned them on his programme. Some media critics expected the palace to take legal action against Mr Morgan. after all, he didn’t.
Despite all the limits on palace communications, royal historians pointed out that it had still revealed far more about Charles than previous monarchs – or even other current members of the royal family.
The King’s grandfather, George VI, was operated on in 1951 for what doctors later concluded was lung cancer. The palace withheld most of the details, which deepened the shock when the king died five months later.
Kensington Palace has said little about the abdominal surgery that recently saw Catherine spend nearly two weeks in a London hospital. Buckingham Palace notified the public in advance that Charles would enter the same hospital, the London Infirmary, to undergo treatment for an enlarged prostate.
Britain’s National Health Service said that the day after the announcement, its website providing advice on how to deal with an enlarged prostate attracted 11 times the number of visitors compared to a typical day. How long patients will have to wait for a prostate operation in the busy NHS is another question.
The tension between the royal family’s right to privacy and public interest in it reflects a wider debate in Britain about privacy, one that is more heated than in the United States, particularly on issues such as health.
Then too, royals play a more ceremonial role in British society than, say, political leaders, which some argue should entitle them to a modicum of privacy, although the king, as head of state, occupies a unique role.
However, the royal family is not the only British institution to come under scrutiny for being wary of medical information. In 2020, Boris Johnson, then Prime Minister, spent three days in the intensive care unit of a London hospital with severe Covid-19. Downing Street issued daily updates saying she was in “extremely good spirits”.
Only after he was discharged did Mr. Johnson himself acknowledge that nurses saved his life by giving him oxygen throughout the night. “Things,” he said, “could have gone either way.”
