Kate Middleton’s cancer diagnosis: Royal’s support network revealed
Princess Catherine has always maintained a close relationship with friends and family and will lean on a tight support network as she battles cancer. See who they are.
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As the Princess of Wales navigates a course of preventive chemotherapy treatment, her tight cohort of family and friends have rallied around to offer comfort and support in the coming weeks.
As well as her husband the Prince of Wales, whom Princess Catherine said has been a great source of “comfort and reassurance,” her parents Carole and Michael Middleton and sister Pippa Matthews and brother James and close friends are eagerly on hand.
The Wales’s are spending the next three weeks at their Norfolk home with Carole and Michael agreeing to stay over during the Easter break to help withthe three children.
Catherine’s mother has been helping with the morning school run and has been driving her and the children to and from school around Windsor in her 4x4 Audi.
Carole and her husband Michael, 74, are known for their hands-on parenting approach and often host their grandchildren for sleepovers.
“Kate’s parents have been brilliant, they have dropped everything for Kate and the family and adore the grandchildren,” a family friend said.
“They dote on Prince George, as well as the others, but George was the first born and Kate stayed with them in Bucklebury after giving birth so they could help with the first born.”
Catherine is famously close to her sister Pippa and chose her as bridesmaid when she married Prince William in 2011, and attended counselling sessions with her brother James, when he suffered depression.
Both siblings have been helping behind the scenes with phone calls and Pippa has been visiting with her brood Arthur, Grace and Rose who are close cousins to the young Wales’s children.
As Catherine announced in her televised announcement – said to be two weeks in the making – she has been grateful for “the love, support and kindness that has been shown by so many of you.”
Among those are close friend Lady Laura Meade, wife of James Meade, one of Prince William’s Old Etonian friends who was best man at their wedding.
Lady Meade is godmother to Prince Louis and James is to Princess Charlotte and they live near the Wales’s Norfolk home Anmer Hall where they are regular visitors.
William’s cousin Zara Tindall and husband Mike are especially close to the Wales’s and swap parenting tips.
Catherine and Zara have developed an exceptionally close bond over their children, having broken away from traditional royal parenting to allow their children more freedom to play and develop.
Although they live 90 minutes away from the Wales’s in Gatcombe Park, near Zara’s mother Princess Anne, they have been calling to offer support, sources say.
Prince William’s long term friend Thomas van Straubenzee, who was married to teacher Lucy Lanigan-O’Keeffe, a teacher at Thomas’s Battersea school previously attended by Prince George and Princess Charlotte, has lent this emotional support through phone calls to William.
A friend of William’s from his teenage years and a school friend of Catherine’s from Marlborough College, Emilia Jardine-Paterson, has been credited calling the couple and offering to help with the children if needed.
School friend Hannah Carter and Catherine, who both attended Marlborough College together and played on the same sports teams, have been in close telephone contact.
Sophie Snugg has been a friend to Catherine for many years and is an expert in early years’ learning. She lives near the couples’ Amner Hall retreat and has reportedly offered to help.
They remain in close contact. Sophie used to date William’s close friend Thomas van Straubenzee and is one of Charlotte’s godparents.
Trini Lough, one of Catherine’s school friends who ran to her rescue when she and William split briefly in 2007, has been in touch with the princess. The two friends were often seen walking with their buggies through Kensington Gardens when their children were younger.
Royal commentator Richard Fitzwilliams said although Catherine said she “is well” her cancer treatment could take a while and it is important for her to surround herself with people she trusts.
“William will of course be with her for as long as he feels it is necessary, he’s always put family first,” he said.
“But when he returns to duty after the Easter holiday, Kate needs support and that’s when she needs to rely on family and friends for support.
“Having a mother and nanny helps, but friends to lean on and care are also crucial as well in times of strife,” he said.
HOW CATHERINE’S CRISIS UNFOLDED
On January 17, Kensington Palace announced Princess Catherine was recovering from planned but unnamed abdominal surgery the previous day, and she was “unlikely to return to public duties until after Easter”.
She had already been out of the public eye since Christmas.
Hours later, Buckingham Palace made it own announcement: that King Charles would also undergo surgery, for an enlarged prostate.
King Charles and Princess Catherine would both end up being discharged from hospital on the same day, January 29, Charles after a three-night stay, and Catherine after 13 days.
Both were expected to make full recoveries.
On February 5, Buckingham Palace announced that King Charles had an unspecified form of cancer.
While the world processed the King’s cancer diagnosis, the next suggestion that something was more seriously wrong with Princess Catherine came on February 27, when Prince William pulled out of a thanksgiving service for the life of King Constantine II, his godfather, the last King of Greece, who had died in January.
Prince William gave his apologies half an hour before he was due to arrive, citing a “personal matter”.
That same day, the royal family announced the sudden death of Prince Michael of Kent’s son-in-law, Thomas Kingston, at just 45.
On March 10, Kensington Palace released a photo of Princess Catherine surrounded by her children, the Princes George (10) and Louis (5) and the Princess Charlotte (8).
In an accompanying message from Princess Catherine, she thanked followers “for your kind wishes and continued support over the last two months” but when those same followers started detecting evidence of photo tampering in the image, the mood quickly soured.
Photo agencies withdrew the image from circulation, and speculation started mounting that the image was manipulated because Catherine was more seriously unwell than the public had been told.
One internet sleuth looked in detail at the clothes the family were wearing in the picture and claimed the photo was actually taken in late 2023.
Princess Catherine issued another public statement, apologising for “any confusion” arising from her “experiment” with photo editing software.
On March 16 a video emerged show Prince William and Princess Catherine in the car park of a produce store in Windsor, but by then the sense of doubt and scepticism was so rampant many believed the woman in the clip was not Princess Catherine at all, but a body double.
Princess Catherine’s video announcement that cancer had been detected in her body, and she would be undergoing chemotherapy treatment, is expected to bring to an end two months of speculation and rumour about the royal family.
But the “incredibly tough couple of months” Princess Catherine mentioned in her video are set to continue as both she and King Charles continue their treatment.
Originally published as Kate Middleton’s cancer diagnosis: Royal’s support network revealed
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