Royals must let in more daylight on health scares

In the months before the Queen’s death, she suffered from bone marrow cancer, or so we were told by her late husband Prince Philip’s close friend Gyles Brandreth.

That rumour had been doing the rounds but was certainly not in the public domain when she died aged 96 from, as her death certificate said, “old age”.

“Mobility issues” were blamed for her sporadic non-attendances as her long reign eventually came to an end and her frailty was increasingly obvious.

Fast forward eighteen months to a new monarch and a new approach. Much has been made of King Charles’s readiness to share his cancer diagnosis and, just before that, his non-cancerous prostate problems.

Cancer charities have welcomed the openness of the royal family, which they believe will encourage people to seek prostate check-ups and is already having the “King Charles effect” on visits to cancer websites.

And there has been a mostly enthusiastic response in the media to the more modern – that is transparent – way Charles is divulging his medical details.

But this is still the Royal Family, where any candour from the inner circle is refreshing because it remains relatively rare.

What we don’t know about the recent royal health disclosures far outweighs what we do know: the nature of the King’s cancer is a mystery, though some oncologists (and not necessarily those treating him) think they know.

And even more mysterious is the cause of Catherine’s predicament. In fact, it appears that her stay in hospital was so cloak and dagger that the ailing King himself was used as a decoy to draw attention away from his daughter-in-law.

Apart from the announcement of her planned abdominal surgery, we have been given no information, no official updates, and not even a fleeting glimpse of her being whisked from hospital to home, although when Charles was discharged on the same day at the same clinic, he left from the front door, with Camilla, and waved to the cameras.

It may be indelicate to pry but the lack of a complete picture has prompted wild speculation. Was Charles’s cancer caught early, as Rishi Sunak suggested, or is he seriously ill as even his friends, kept in the dark, are musing?

Stephen Fry said on the BBC’s Today podcast that he was “anxious” that “having been in the wings all this time and to have such a short time on centre stage” would be “really, really sad” for Charles.

The stories about the Princess of Wales range from the upbeat, she’s working on her emails and making progress, to the alarming, with two nurses reportedly at her bedside and her convalescence prolonged.

With so little to go on, we scan old photographs for clues to Catherine’s sickness although we don’t know what we’re looking for.

William is under scrutiny too. Emerging briefly to preside over an investiture at Windsor Castle, and then at a fundraising gala in London, were his eyes hollow, his face gaunt?

A normal person could be forgiven a wobble with both his wife and father out of sorts, and the Windsors are normal people; but they are not a normal family.

Individually, they may be susceptible to the same twists of fate as the rest of us, but collectively they are an institution that, if we believe in constitutional monarchy, must be protected at all costs.

While Queen Elizabeth was alive, mystique afforded the best protection as she adhered to Walter Bagehot’s diktat during Victoria’s reign not to “let in daylight upon magic”.

Through no fault of her own, daylight did seep in, from Diana, from Sarah Ferguson and from Charles, famously spilling the beans to Jonathan Dimbleby. But the Queen was an enigma to the last.

Charles now hopes to straddle two worlds, embracing today’s more confessional culture while shielding the crown from too much probing.

Unfortunately, he has no control over the exposés unleashed by others who have probably damaged the mystique beyond repair. Nothing, it seems, is out of bounds for Harry and Meghan, who are unlikely to have been trusted with many insights into the current crisis.

Since Charles can’t put the genie back in the bottle, a policy of greater openness may be the way forward. It would put an end to the second-guessing and also the inevitable leaking by royal malcontents.

Contrast the inquisition into Joe Biden’s wellbeing by the US press corps this week, with reporters demanding to know “how bad is your memory?” and querying his “mental acuity”, to the respectful questions here about the King’s health.

Charles may shudder at the lack of gentility, and as an unelected head of state he won’t have to handle the bear pit of a press grilling, but the truth can be reassuring.

Uncertainty – over how sick Charles is, what’s really wrong with Catherine, when William will be back in action – is more destabilising than the actual facts for an institution that depends above all on stability.

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