For about 12 hours in May, every royal writer, reporter, commentator and two-bit X-account holder who thinks the Sovereign Grant is the name one of the King’s racehorses had a relatively major fit of panic.
Word got out that Buckingham Palace had news; news with a capital N. Pearls were clutched. Prayers said. Rushed news meetings were held.
And then came a rare, bright announcement out of London — King Charles, a few months after stunning the world with the revelations he has cancer, would return to public-facing duties given that doctors were feeling “very encouraged” and “positive” about his progress.
Huzzah!’ we all said and mopped our brows and considered upgrading our choice of deodorant.
However, the King is only one of the two members of the royal family who has, this year, become horribly intimate with the scourge of cancer. Kate, the Princess of Wales, is also being treated for an unspecified form of cancer. (The clear contender for royal word of the year is “unspecified”.)
On Monday, Buckingham and Kensington Palaces face a milestone Kate moment.
There was a time period of exactly 80 days between the King’s shocking revelation on 5 February and then the massive-sigh-of-relief on 26 April.
Given Kate announced her own diagnosis on 22 March, that means she will pass the 80 day mark, you guessed it, today.
In the nearly 80 days of the palace’s princess information blackout, we have learnt exactly nothing about her treatment, her wellbeing and her condition from the horse’s, or at least the horse-loving family’s, mouth.
Yes, husband Prince William has made a series of comments largely devoid of meaning like this week on Wednesday when he told D-Day veteran Geoffrey Weaving, 100, that Kate “is getting better, yes”.
This is hardly Pentagon Papers-level stuff.
Truly, if you wrote down exactly what we know about the princess there would be plenty of space left over on a Post-It note.
So now join me in entering Tricky Territory.
Kate is sick and has cancer. She therefore has exactly the same right to privacy as every other single human being and should be under no obligation to provide hot and cold running updates about her treatment, side effects, condition or whether she has drunk her recommended eight glasses of tap water today.
But how do you balance that with the fact she is also the Princess of Wales and one of the most visible people on the entire planet? How do you weigh up giving her the space to get well with the requirement to, at some point, say something and to provide something like an update?
How much longer can or will things go before the palace provides some sort of even oblique, vague update? How long can this policy of total silence hold for?
Is total silence for another 80 days even feasible? How long can this policy of total silence truly hold for?
There is only one ‘Kate’. Say her name in any town, city or regional bus depot between Double Bay and Djibouti and people would know who you are talking about.
More importantly for Buckingham Palace, she is the great hope of the monarchy, or if you want to be more generous towards William, at least 50 percent of it.
Never is the Kate-shaped hole in the royal family going to be more painfully obvious than about now.
The coming weeks will see a series of outings where the Princess of Wales would usually turn up and do some grade-A dazzling in a series of lovely jubbly outfits and diamonds and hats and children that would keep us, the masses, entertained and charmed for ages.
Who needs bread and circuses when we can have Boden frocks and the Cambridge Lover’s Knot?
There will be no more glaring moment than on Tuesday June 25 when King Charles and Queen Camilla host a State Banquet for The Emperor and Empress of Japan, an event that would normally see Kate appear tiare-ed and gowned-up to absolute suck-it-Cinderella perfection.
Not to get too philosophical so late in the week and all but…what is the very essence of monarchy if not to sate the people with images such as exactly this?
If not providing these sorts of dopamine hits of real-life princess-ing? We want, nay need, a bit of that fairytale stardust to be liberally sprinkled all over our social media feeds and news sites with a certain degree of semi-regularity.
However, come the Japan State visit, the sequin stocks of London will remain safe and untouched a little longer.
The only glamour we are likely to have at the State Banquet will have to come via Camilla and the wonder that designer Bruce Oldifeld can sew invisible pockets designed for dog treats and spare lighters into evening wear. (Well, I’m guessing slash hoping.)
As we get set to pass the 80 day Kate mark, the dilemma here is, how the hell do you balance the princess’ individual, human rights and needs and those of a vast, fabled, millennium-old institution?
An institution, moreover, that has just skated and skittered and scraped its way through nearly five years of scandal, strife, embarrassment, loss and Prince Andrew accidentally making the Pizza Express in Woking the most famous chain restaurant outpost in the world?
I truly don’t know the answer, but then, I’m only paid to point out the problems here.
At least we know now, thanks to Geoffrey Weaver and his brief conversation with William that Kate is “getting better”. There is only so much antiperspirant any writer can wear.
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.
