What does Kate’s cancer mean for Prince George?

The Princess of Wales’ public cancer battle means her eldest child and future king, George, could face a path eerily reminiscent of his father’s.

Kate. Kate. Kate. Kate. Kate.

The Princess of Wales has, for almost 72 hours now, dominated the thoughts, conversations, the internet, social media channels, newspapers and a significant quantity of the world’s available headspace.

As we all know, the 42-year-old has cancer, a fact that she revealed in a two-minute video that caused the Earth to tilt just a bit on its axis.

The princess, who is undergoing preventive chemotherapy, has been everywhere, as have stories highlighting Prince William’s cockle-warming devotion to putting his family first.

(Notably this is unlike any previous Princes of Wales ever, men generally whose idea of parenting was taking their teenage sons, only ever sons, off to do a bit of roister-doister-ing in France and to teach them the finer points of pillaging.)

But in all of the Kate coverage with a dash of William thrown in, has someone in particular been overlooked?

I’m talking about Prince George, the next Prince of Wales and most likely the world’s first King to have his own official hologram. (Imagine how much time George VII will save from having to actually travel to Blackpool to shake hands at community centres when he can just beam himself in from the comfort of his Buckingham Palace pod. Marvellous stuff!)

George is now the same age, or thereabouts, when William was forced to watch his mother’s suffering play out for all the world to watch too. Picture: Getty Images

Following in his father’s footsteps?

If Kate’s willingness to be open about her travails and the strain is wholly in the vein of Diana, Princess of Wales, then George is sadly about to follow in his father William’s footsteps.

George is now the same age, or thereabouts, when William was forced to watch his mother’s suffering play out for all the world to watch too.

Kensington Palace has made no bones about the centrality of the Prince and Princess of Wales’ three young children in how the events of recent days have played out.

As the Times’ Kate Mansey has reported, “When the Prince and Princess of Wales considered how to break the news of Kate’s cancer diagnosis, their first question was not, ‘How will we tell the world?’ but, ‘How will we tell the children?’”

The release of Kate’s video was timed to coincide with George, his sister Princess Charlotte and wee scamp Prince Louis heading off on their Easter holidays.

According to the Sunday Times’ Roya Nikkhah, the “couple wanted to avoid an announcement while they were still at school.”

Now, in the wake of the video, the family has ‘retreated’ to their Norfolk home, Anmer Hall, according to the Telegraph, where they can “circle the wagons”, meaning for the next three weeks, the prince and princess can shield and protect their little ones.

However come April 17, when they go back to Lambrook school in Windsor, it will be a different matter altogether.

As a palace source told the Sunday Times: “George is ten now and can’t be shielded from any of this now. Once it’s at the school gate and in the school playground, he won’t be able to avoid it.”

Kate and William might have all their wagons in that ice tight circle but there is a limit to how much they can do to protect George once he is back at school. Picture: Getty Images

Personal pain played out in public

And this is unfortunately eerily reminiscent of what George’s father had to go through in the 90s.

The image of William and his brother Prince Harry walking through the silent streets of London behind their mother’s coffin in 1997 is seared in our collective memory, a hauntingly traumatic bit of royal theatre that if anyone else tried it, social workers would have gotten involved.

However, even before this tragic, unthinkable loss, the young prince knew all too much about having to bear up as his mother’s agonies played out in public and his parents’ marriage broke down on newspaper front pages and on TV screens day after day.

The early 90s saw the UK media overrun by the never-ending War of the Wales, the endless tit-for-tatting as Charles and Diana fought for upper moral hand and sympathy vote of Brits.

(It was a brutal and bloody battle. At a Sandringham dinner party in the early 1990s, Charles told guests, “The last thing I want to do is get up in the morning and read what my bloody crazy wife has been doing,” according to Tina Brown’s The Diana Chronicles. Charming, no?)

In 1992, when the prince was 12-years-old, Prime Minister John Major stood up in parliament and announced his parents were separating.

In 1994, Charles did a lengthy TV interview with journalist Jonathan Dimbleby and admitted that he had been unfaithful. 14 million Brits tuned in, including 12-year-old William.

A year later, when Diana sat down with the now disgraced BBC journalist Martin Bashir for her infamous Panorama appearance, the young prince was watching from his Eton housemaster’s study as his mother told the world, “there were three of us in the marriage” and revealed she had self-harmed.

Kate and William in happier times. Picture: Getty Images

Brown writes of Diana of that time: “The non-stop coverage of his mother’s private life had become increasingly difficult for William … William could not even go out for a bar of chocolate without seeing some new sensational splash about his mother’s latest boyfriend or the ugliness of his parents’ marital war.”

Or, as Penny Junor author of Prince William: Born to be King said of William, “He would be superhuman if he didn’t have demons”.

Protecting the Prince

You get the point I’m trying to make here. While Charles and Diana’s marriage breakdown is a different kettle of traumatic fish than Kate’s cancer, still in both instances we have very young princes having to make the awkward, fumbling transition to adolescence while also coping with the entire world knowing about – and talking about – their mothers’ ordeals.

Kate and William might, this week, have all their wagons in that ice tight circle but there is a limit to how much they can do to protect George once he is back at school.

Unlike Charles and Diana though, Kate is all too aware of the impact that childhood emotional trauma can have on kids’ development. Picture: Getty Images

Unlike Charles and Diana though, Kate is all too aware of the impact that childhood emotional trauma can have on kids’ development and the possible flow-on effects later in life. For the princess, this must be an added weight and stress at such a horrible time.

There are no signs that the 24/7, non-stop, around-the-clock Kate-a-thon is going away any time soon but maybe, just occasionally, in the days and weeks ahead, spare a thought for a young prince who may be about to get his first truly horrible taste of what being a member of the royal family can mean.

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 What does Kate’s cancer mean for Prince George?