Kate, Princess of Wales, has ‘turned a corner’ in cancer fight, report claims

A new report has provided a rare update on the Princess of Wales as she battles cancer, leaving one big question unanswered.

Someone alert the Westminster Abbey bell ringers! Wake up the King’s Troop Royal Horse Artillery and get them into a royal park quick sticks to fire up the gun salute! Alert The King’s Road branch of Zara! Their number-one customer could be back, any hot minute now!

Why all the exclamation marks? Why such giddy excitement? Why the need to terrify the squirrels of Green and Hyde Parks?

More than two months after Kate the Princess of Wales revealed she has cancer we have an update and the news is… good (And people have told me that grasping crystals with one hand while typing with the other would do nothing.)

Vanity Fair’s Katie Nicholl has the distinction of being one of the royal correspondents who has actual, good and connected sources rather than just quoting something a Kensington Palace’s downstairs maid’s second cousin told a barman at her Chelsea local. And it is Nicholl who is the bearer of today’s update.

Kensington Palace released a video earlier this year of the Princess of Wales, Kate Middleton, revealing she is undergoing treatment for cancer.

Specifically, there are three words in her latest piece that are manna for royal fans, royal watchers and anyone who enjoys looking at photos of a princess in machine washable fabrics posing for selfies.

According to Nicholl’s source Kate has “turned a corner”.

“It has been a great relief that she is tolerating the medication and is actually doing a lot better,” a family friend of Kate’s told Vanity Fair.

“It has, of course, been a very challenging and worrying time. Everyone has rallied around her—William, her parents, and her sister and brother.”

Currently that rallying is taking place at Anmer Hall on the Sandringham Estate, the ten-bedroom number that the late Queen gave to Kate and Prince William for their 2011 wedding because she couldn’t find anything on their Homebase gift registry in her price range.

With school having broken up for half-term last week, the Wales family including children Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis, have reportedly decamped to Norfolk, having decided to “bail out” of Windsor for the duration of the half term holidays.

Possibly staying in the guest wing and on hand for buoying rounds of post-super charades are her family, the gang once somewhat acidly nicknamed the ‘En Masse Middletons’ for their propensity to go everywhere together. (I think it’s rather sweet of them.)

The Princess of Wales with Princess Charlotte. Picture: Kensington Palace/Youtube

It has been the princess’ relatives, rather than the Waleses’ long term group of close friends, who Kate has ‘leaned on’ and ‘confided in’ during her health crisis, a friend of the prince and princess’ has told The Daily Beast’s Tom Sykes.

The friend told the Beast: “The circle of trust is tiny. She has been surrounded by Carole and Michael, and (sister) Pippa and (brother) James have obviously been there for her as well. They are an incredibly tight family, and Catherine feels absolutely confident relying on them. They have been there for her for decades and never let her down.”

Still, amidst all this lovely jubbly news, let us all manage our expectations here.

That Kate has “turned a corner” is wonderful and must come as a huge relief to the makers of the sort of purple or lime green polyester blazers she now buys that she is stuck in her business casual phase. But, that does not mean that the Princess of Wales will be back out and about doing her bit for Crown Inc in public any time soon.

The princess, per Nicholl, “is in no hurry to return to work, with her focus being entirely on her recovery.” A well-placed source told her: “There is no timeline, and there is certainly no hurry. It will be when Catherine feels ready and when she gets the greenlight from her medical team. But she will 100 per cent be coming back to work, of that there is no question.”

At which point up comes a plaintive, worldwide cry of ‘Whennnnnnnnnnnn?’ Quite when might this “100 per cent” morph from a tantalising possibility to a surefire bet?

Kate, in the weeks before it was revealed she is fighting cancer.

2024 has been a testing time - in every way imaginable. This year has had the unfortunate distinction of being the year we were involuntarily put on an extreme Princess of Wales fast, first due to her planned abdominal surgery and then by after she was diagnosed with that malignant nasty, cancer.

Adding a degree of urgency to the resumption of normal Kate operations, from Buckingham and Kensington Palaces’ perspectives, is that the beginning few months of this year saw cockamamie, strange and plain noxious rumours and conspiracy theories about the 42-year-old’s health and exact location spawn across social media. (The only sliver of a silver lining? I’ve finally had cause to use the word ‘cockamamie’ professionally.)

With Nicholl’s report on Wednesday, it sounds like Kate might be ever so slowly coming out the other side of this particular PR disaster.

However, ‘turning a corner’ is still a world away from a return to anything even vaguely resembling normality.

In a couple of weeks, as the rest of the royal family is hatting-up for Trooping the Colour and readying themselves for some defcon-five waving duties, the princess will likely be at home in Windsor reading Colleen Hoover or finding Pinterest inspo for the linen cupboard makeover of her dreams or enjoying firing her air rifle in the direction of Prince Andrew’s Royal Lodge.

The Princess of Wales in Scotland last year. Picture: Jane Barlow - WPA Pool/Getty Images

Earlier this week a royal source told the Beast’s Sykes, “Kate’s diary for this year is empty. There is nothing planned. She may not appear in public for the rest of the year.”

Still, the auguries are decidedly positive. The princess “is understood to have done occasional school runs,” Sykes reports.

“There have been rumours she has done drop-off, but I haven’t seen her since the video,” one parent at the Waleses’ school Lambrook told him. “We all feel very protective of her. Ask anyone at the school—they are amazing parents.”

So, watch this space and listen out for those Abbey bells and keep an eye on the London squirrels. Good things are coming.

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.