Kate Middleton crisis King Charles can no longer hide

Kate Middleton’s illness has caused a crunch point within the royal family that King Charles is in a race against time to fix.

COMMENT

Her late Majesty used to deputise her dresser Angela Kelly to wear in her sensible low heels, making Kelly essentially the Blister Preventer Pursuivant. I hope that Queen Camilla has tapped one of her roster of official Companions, every one a Horse and Hound subscriber and woman who knows her way around the business end of a dead pheasant, to do the same.

Camilla has really been wearing out the shoe leather of late, because right now the 76-year-old is it. Tutta. The sum total of senior working members of the royal family who are not currently a) being fed coddled eggs in their sick bed or b) off in California hawking their truth or c) are so far down the line of succession that Getty doesn’t even send photographers to cover their away days.

Queen Camilla is single-handedly holding up the royal family. Picture: Chris Jackson/Getty Images

On Tuesday, Buckingham Palace revealed that King Charles is being treated for an unspecified form of cancer, the shocking news coming only a week after Kate the Princess of Wales was discharged from hospital herself, having undergone planned abdominal surgery.

It is a situation that, if you really want to put a positive slant on things, is a category five disaster. (Optimism, thy name is not a royal courtier right now.)

Charles, fighting cancer. Kate, off the clock until April. Black sheep and man whose birthday is no longer marked by Westminster Abbey bells being rung, Prince Harry the Duke of Sussex, dashing across the Atlantic to see his father.

Time and time and time and time again in recent years the word ‘crisis’ has been liberally applied to royal goings on (what, moi?) but we have never seen anything like this before. What, I wonder, is more crisis-y than ‘crisis’?

I think it’s fair to say that we have reached the ‘catastrophe’ phase.

If Elmo’s recent viral “How is everybody doing?” Tweet registered at the Palace, the answer for courtiers is easy. NOT WELL. No one is okay, not even after a second lunchtime gin.

Things would look significantly different this week if it was only the King currently suffering through health woes. It would be worrying and all, but onwards the royal ship would sail. However, the simultaneous loss of Kate from the working ranks in the short terms is much more dire for Crown Inc.

The Princess of Wales crisis is here.

Catherine, Princess Of Wales hasn’t been seen in public since 2023. Picture: Chris Jackson/Getty Images

For the last week, the 42-year-old has been cosseted at home at the Waleses’ Windsor home, Adelaide Cottage, recuperating and regretting letting Prince Louis learn the drums this term. (Well, I’m assuming.)

It is one thing to intellectually understand the fact that the royal family is about to suffer through a dry spell, denied the effervescence of Kate’s glamour, her (comparative) youth and her princessy juju; it’s another entirely to begin to watch this play out.

Welcome friends to the long, hard slog through the Kate-free desert (the Kate-obi?) and lord. I’m over this already.

All we have had for the last couple of weeks is Camilla, out and about and really putting some miles on her surprisingly large collection of knee-high boots, which have taken her to an art gallery, a community centre, a women’s refuge, a new cancer support centre, Bath Abbey and a reception at Windsor Castle to name just some.

Queen Camilla has a welcome cup of tea from the canteen during a visit to the newly opened Meadows Community Centre on February 2, 2024 in Cambridge, England. Picture: Arthur Edwards – WPA Pool/Getty Images

Even I, as someone who thinks that the Queen is bloody marvellous and deserves far more credit and applause, am not going to be able to muster eight long weeks of enthusiasm about Her Majesty and just Her Majesty. I can barely even rally a lacklustre ‘girl power’ here.

The problem is that the royal family without Kate is a bit like Macca’s slashing their entire menu to just Fillet of Fish.

What stretches out before us now is week upon week of the remaining handful of diligent women – and Prince Edward – left to fly the Windsor flag, getting to watch them do the plain Jane, meat and potatoes work of royalty.

What, you aren’t thrilled at the prospect of a front-row seat to Edward cutting a ribbon on a new airport on a tiny mid-Atlantic island with a population of 4000 people or visiting some botanical gardens? (Both of which the Duke of Edinburgh has done in recent weeks.)

Can the royal family be sustained by this kind of wholesome PR for eight weeks? Picture: Buckingham Palace via Getty Images

Or how about some hardcore Anne action? Like her opening an equestrian centre, attending an engineering prize or visiting a Save the Children op shop? (Again, all real.)

This is what the lower order ranks of working members of the royal family actually do, day in and day out, to their credit; the gladhanding, on the ground work that is crucial to the monarchy’s future, both their image and in the ever-raging battle for hearts and minds.

However, graft needs to be balanced out by the bigger, showier, more captivating part of the show. For monarchy to work, we need both the magical and the mundane, the marvellous and the menschy.

With Kate gone and fears about the King, the royal ecosystem is badly out of whack.

The royal family is lacking without Princess of Wales. Picture: Jonathan Brady – Pool / Getty Images

The unavoidable fact is that while Sophie the Duchess of Edinburgh, Anne and Edward are redoubtable hard-workers who deserve far more regard than they ever get, it is impossible to get particularly excited about them. They are the filling stodge of royalty.

But the razzle dazzle? The jazz hands? The shimmer and the sparkle? That’s all Kate, with some Prince William thrown in for good measure too. (Look, the man can wear the hell out of a velvet blazer.)

With the princess and the prince currently out of the picture, this balancing act between the donkeywork and the stardust has collapsed and all that the Palace has left to serve up to the public is all fibre, all the time.

After only a week of oh-so-much Camilla – even for us Camilla-philes – how much longer can the Palace keep up the pretence that everything’s just fine and dandy?

Courtiers have two choices, as far as I can see. Start updating their CVs and hope that Downing Street or Cadbury's is hiring or task someone with working out how that hologram Abba tour worked. Desperate times call for desperate phone calls.

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.

Originally published as Kate Middleton crisis King Charles can no longer hide