‘Terrified’: Photos reveal bizarre Queen Camilla moment in Samoa
The Queen has been pictured crying with red eyes as it was revealed she and King Charles had stayed at a spa that treats “early cancer”.
Her late Majesty really perfected her resting Queen face.
Neither scowl nor smile, it was a famously inscrutable sort of nonplussed ambivalence with some low-level dyspepticism thrown in. What a woman.
Our current Queen, Camilla, has never quite lived up to that enigmatic gold standard and her face actually betrays certain low levels of feeling at times. But still, low levels and all of that – which is what made Her Majesty crying in public recently so goddamn extraordinary.
There she sat, tears streaming down her face in full view of the press corps, her eyes red, the waterworks set to on.
Erm, is everything quite all right, Your Majesty?
A Queen displaying such an overflowing of emotion? What next – the Buckingham Palace gift shop putting out a line of tasteful, coroneted nipple pasties?
This is the British royal family we are talking about, an outfit which was globally excoriated for its outwardly reptilian response to the death of a young mother only 20-something years ago – and the woman who was, for a while at least, meant to become Queen one day herself.
This bizarre Camilla moment happened last week in Apia, Samoa on the final day of her and King Charles’ 11-day tour of Australia and the South Pacific nation. The waterworks, you see, were from her laughing so hard, the reason given for her breaking down in such fits of giggles, supposedly a malfunctioning microphone.
While the Queen has been known to display far more of a sense of humour publicly than several centuries of her crowned forebears all lumped together and forced to listen to a Benny Hill LP on repeat, still, this is all decidedly peculiar. (Let us never forget that glorious time she naughtily winked at the press while being forced to host tangerine tyrant Donald Trump at Clarence House).
Because there is a wry smile here and there, and then there is this degree of letting it all-hang-out, public display of feelings.
How to interpret such an oddly extreme reaction?
Luckily we have the Daily Beast’s Tom Sykes on the case, who has now popped up with some of his signature cracking reporting and who has revealed that while the 76-year-old was indeed laughing, she is also “terrified” and “fearful” that her husband is “rushing” his recovery.
Because the other thing that happened on the same day as Microphonegate was Charles uttering a truly shocking line that sparked fears and rattled nerves in several time zones and continents.
On that final day in Apia, after having pulled off a very successful tour, the King would have been entitled to a bit of a victory lap, but instead he set the cat among the pigeons with his closing comment that “[I] hope that I survive long enough to come back again and see you”.
And just like that, the King put the highly, highly sensitive subject of his own mortality right there, smack bang, in the middle of the table.
Suddenly those tears of Camilla’s take on a certain new hue, no?
Let’s not forget here that since February, the King has been receiving weekly treatment for an unspecified form of cancer – and even taking 11 days off it for this recent tour required his doctors’ okay.
Then came some low-level back-pedalling, with Sykes reporting that despite Charles’ shocking “survive” line, his friends “have brushed off any suggestion that the king was, in fact, saying a final farewell or suggesting he might die soon”.
Everyone, now join me in a restorative exhale.
However, others are less Zen about it.
A friend of the Queen’s told Sykes, “It was a strange thing to say, and I think Camilla had an emotional reaction. Of course it would. She is terrified. They have had a horrendous year”.
Strange indeed, because the signs coming out of London are nothing if not disorienting right now.
On one hand, we have moments like this “survive” comment – and then we have Buckingham Palace sources energetically briefing that next year will see the “thriving” King return to the usual roster of spring and autumn international tours.
A senior palace official told the Sunday Times’ Roya Nikkhah after Samoa that they are “now working on a pretty normal-looking, full overseas tour programme for next year which is a high for us to end [this trip] on”.
At which point things became even more complicated, when the Daily Mail’s pseudonymous Ephraim Hardcastle column reported that the Palace’s enthusiastic and optimistic briefing about next year’s overseas tour plans had sparked “concern among the King’s medical team”.
“Having skipped his cancer treatment regime to make the latest tour – and with no one certain how his body has coped – it was planned that he would take time off on his return, allowing him to recover and for doctors to carry out a full assessment of his wellbeing,” Hardcastle has written.
Clearly, the King and Queen are actively prioritising the 75-year-old’s health. It was also revealed this week that they had secretly stopped off in India for three days at the holistic Soukya Spa in Bengaluru, an ayurvedic retreat that is a longtime favourite of Her Majesty’s, on the way home.
While both of Their Majesties have previously stayed at Soukya, which costs a bargain $5900 a week, the spa also offers treatments connected to “early cancer” and offers “supportive and palliative cancer care”.
The Telegraph has reported though that their stay “was unconnected to the King’s ongoing weekly cancer treatment”.
My nerves can’t take this – can yours?
A crying Queen, a King having his doshas tended to in between courses of lentils and royal doctors “concerned” about Palace briefings?
Even the late Queen wouldn’t be able to keep up her innate Sphinxiness in these circumstances.
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
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