The Princess of Wales has shocked the world with the news that she is undergoing chemotherapy and is pioneering an entirely new age for the royal family. 

Let me tell you a story about a hospital visit the world has largely forgotten about. 

This trip takes place in great secrecy, a VVVVIP ferried from a royal property with what I’m assuming was a high degree of furtiveness, everything done in great secrecy, all cloaks and all daggers. That is until somehow the sharp-clawed Sun got their hands on all this, that Queen Elizabeth had spent a night in hospital, and Buckingham Palace was forced to admit the truth.

That was October 2021, nearly a year before Her late Majesty died and when, we now know, the late Queen most likely had myeloma – a form of bone marrow cancer. Even today, that has never been vocally confirmed by the palace. 

Contrast that clandestine dashing and squirreling around with the watershed events of Saturday, with Kate the Princess of Wales revealing via video she has cancer and is undergoing preventative chemotherapy. 

In two minutes and 15 seconds the princess has managed to usher in a new age – and a new world – when it comes to the royal family’s transparency about their health. 

Credit where credit is due – King Charles got the openness ball rolling when, in January, he announced he was off for treatment for an enlarged prostate. Nothing to worry about chaps! Routine and all that.

Then, only weeks later Charles got another unfortunate, unwanted opportunity to practice this new forthrightness when the palace revealed that during that surgery, the King’s doctors had discovered he had cancer.

His Majesty, at both moments, was rightly lauded for his frankness and for putting the Buckingham Palace letterhead to brave use.

Now, this weekend, Kate has taken this all a giant step further. Seated in a spring garden in Windsor, the Princess of Wales, speaking down the barrel of the camera, gave a direct explanation of recent events, revealing that her doctors too had discovered she has cancer during her January abdominal surgery. 

Even beyond this, Kensington Palace would seem to have briefed select UK broadsheet newspapers with further details like the reason this revelation was being made now was because Kate and Prince William wanted to make it when they could protect their three young children from the public reaction. (Only hours before the video was released, the Wales kidlets broke up for their Easter hols.)

What Charles started, Kate has run with and what we saw on Saturday was the mother of three, comparatively to the royal family of old, throwing the palace gates open to the clavering, curious public. 

There are of course limits to this newfangled, newfound candidness. The palaces (Buckingham for Charles, Kensington for Kate) have not revealed what sort of cancer either has or gone into any realm of specificity about their exact treatments or prognoses. We are still in the dark about much that is going on and what might lie ahead.

But, what is remarkable is how much has changed since that overnight hospital stay of Her late Majesty’s in 2021. 

Not only the late Queen but the Queen Mother and also according to some reports Prince Philip battled cancer during their lives (twice in the case of the Queen Mother) and yet even now none of this has been actually confirmed. 

In the space of the only 18-months that Charles has been on the throne we have gone from a zip-lipped palace posture of revealing only what is strictly, absolutely necessary to where we are now, with the Head of State and one of the most senior members of the royal family issuing frank statements off their own bat and trying out this new frankness.

To some degree here, Kate and Charles have little choice. We are now in an age where the mob - especially the social media mob - demand a far, far higher level of transparency from public figures and leaders. The expectations about what people feel they deserve to know are like nothing before. 

Queen Elizabeth got something of a pass on this front, on her staunch refusal to offer any explanation for her declining health, out of unspoken deference to her age and because of the incredible respect and admiration her decades on the throne had engendered. 

However, that some lassitude was never going to be afforded to Charles.

Moreover, the King and the princess are no doubt aware of the incredible, and potentially life-saving, power of them coming forward and speaking up about their health. In the 24 hours after His Majesty’s announcement of his enlarged prostate in January, the relevant page on the UK’s National Health Service website saw a 1000 per cent jump in visits. 

In all of this, in all the fear and the sadness and the stress of what they are going through as human beings, they must also be painfully aware that they have some degree of responsibility to use their misfortune for the public good.

Balancing all these competing factors – and the fact that despite everything Charles and Kate are human and deserve all the privacy and space they might need during their treatments and recovery – will be no easy feat.

Despite the brave new worldness that Kate has instituted with her video this weekend, at the end of the day, the sad fact remains that she and the King and the royal family now find themselves facing down the very same sadness, fear and stress as millions of other families who have a loved one with cancer.

This weekend, no matter the titles, the tiaras and the palaces, the King and the Princess of Wales have reminded us that they too are all too human. 

Daniela Elser is news.com.au’s royal writer. Read more of her work here. 

Read more about Princess Kate’s cancer announcement here.