I have a simple request on behalf of all royal writers, all reporters tasked with covering the palace beat and anyone professionally required to regularly type the words ‘Buckingham Palace’: No more major announcements and cymbal clashes out of London please. My nervous system can’t take it.
King Charles is in hospital! Kate the Princess of Wales is in hospital! The King has cancer! Kate is missing! The princess has released a photo proving that Prince William is not keeping her in some turret! The princess fiddled and faddled with the image and the world’s photo agencies are now treating her as sceptically as the Iranian state news agency! Kate has cancer!
On Friday, we looked to be getting another one of these whumps. Word spread through newsrooms like proverbial wildfire – Buckingham Palace was set to announce something big. Thus loins were girded and some very deep breaths were taken. What horrible calamity, requiring even more synonyms to be found for ‘disaster’, had befallen the House of Windsor now?
And then came the strangest, most unexpected reveal short of Princess Anne deciding to join the cast of Strictly Come Dancing – some actual good news.
Late on Friday London time, came the shocking press release – King Charles had been given the green light by doctors to frontline royal duties this week with a joint visit to a cancer centre this week with Queen Camilla. The icing on the cake: A new and surprisingly affectionate portrait of the King and Queen.
The Krug better have been read on ice at Clarence House that day.
But before anyone breathes too big of a sigh of relief though, it’s worth looking at what the palace has actually said and perhaps more importantly, what is has not said.
According to the palace, Charles’ “doctors are sufficiently pleased with the progress made so far that the King is now able to resume a number of public-facing duties.” His Majesty’s medical team are also “very encouraged” by the progress of his treatment while elsewhere reference is made to the 75-year-old’s “continued recovery”.
However, nowhere is the word ‘remission’ used.
Nowhere is there any suggestion that King’s treatment is about to be reduced or that an end date has been set.
And nowhere has anyone actually said that the King is out of the woods.
His Majesty has not gotten the all clear nor is anyone optimistically ballyhooing that he is in the process of thoroughly beating this rotten disease.
Everyone also please note here the timing of this lovely-jubbly news coming out.
Only 24 hours before the palace was busy chirping about “sufficiently pleased” doctors, the view of the situation coming from The Daily Beast’s Tom Sykes was far less ebullient and rosy.
An “old friend of the [royal] family,” had told Sykes that the King “ is really very unwell. More than they are letting on.”
Sykes writes that when he had asked friends of the Charles about His Majesty’s health, “the most common response is a lowering of the voice by half an octave or so, followed by the sombre, drawn-out pronouncement: ‘It’s not good.’”
The Beast also reported that “not only are Charles’ funeral plans being regularly updated but that a document reviewing what went well after the queen’s funeral … is circulating in Whitehall.”
Bloody hell.
Sykes’ story went live just before lunchtime on Thursday, London time, and by Friday afternoon, after nearly three months of Buckingham Palace saying very little if nothing about Charles, Crown Inc had popped up to toot about his return to public engagements duties and that his doctors were “very encouraged”.
Likewise, the unusually touching new image of the King and Queen was actually taken April 10, according to the Times. Which is to say, the palace has been sitting on this happy snap for the better part of three weeks.
So, why the update and the new image coming out now?
Occam’s razor, as all you philosophy heads out there know, means basically, the simplest and most obvious explanation is often the right one. Can a line be drawn from Sykes’ exclusive bit of bombshell reporting to the palace suddenly deciding to go positively nearly Sussex-ian and to do some sharing?
In case you are wondering, Sykes, days on from Buckingham Palace’s Charles good news, has reported that the King “is more unwell than the palace is suggesting”.
Whatever prompted the good news out of Monarchy HQ, at least, it means that they are in for a nice, clear win, given that, so far, 2024 is a year that has gone repeatedly, grimly pear-shaped.
Incoming this week should be a nice round of UK front pages offering up positive, heartwarming (or at least a-light-heart-microwave-heating) coverage of a grinning King and Queen, which would have to be exactly what the royal spin doctors have been hankering for months now.
I suppose for now we have no choice but to wait. Is the palace just being circumspect and cautious and Charles will still be King in two decades? (By then he will be 95-years-old and the late Queen was 96-years-old when she trundled off to the race meet in the sky.) Or is Sykes’ on the money and truth is not of a more grim sort?
All we can do is practise some nice calming breaths. And hope. And pray. And twitchily watch the Buckingham Palace press office. And nervously bite our fingernails. And wait.
Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.