With Princess Kate and King Charles Battling Cancer, the Monarchy Has Never Felt More FragileWith Princess Kate and King Charles Battling Cancer, the Monarchy Has Never Felt More Fragile

When King Charles was crowned just over a year ago, nobody, not even the king himself, could have predicted the first year of his reign would play out as it has. Just nine months after his coronation, watched by some 400 million people around the world, in a coincidence as bizarre as it was unprecedented, the monarch and his beloved daughter-in-law the Princess of Wales were both admitted to the same London hospital within days of one another. And then the one-two punch of why: Despite initial assurances that neither condition was believed to be cancerous, the palace announced that Charles had in fact been diagnosed with cancer, and after several weeks of brutal speculation and online conspiracy theories, Kate had too.

The earlier hospitalization announcements, released to the public just hours apart, were only part of what would eventually come out. Where the king was concerned, the palace did not specify which type of cancer, only that it was not prostate, and explained that the monarch would take a break from public engagements while he received outpatient treatment. The princess’s situation seemed different from the outset. At first, the public learned that she’d spend up to two weeks at the London Clinic after undergoing “planned” major abdominal surgery and would return to her duties around Easter. Pressed, the palace announced the unspecified condition was “noncancerous.” But while she was recovering, Princess Kate received the shocking news that she too had cancer.

It was a defining moment in royal history.

With both the king and the Princess of Wales temporarily out of action, Prince William announced he would be taking time off to look after his wife and their young family. The palace, keen to play down any sense of panic, called the apparent crisis a “blip,” insisting the king was upbeat about his prognosis and would return to work as soon as he was given the greenlight by his medical team. With Kate, there was less guidance as to when the princess would return to public duties.

For once, the palace did not have a game plan. This was not a public scandal or a crisis like an abdication. Nevertheless it forced a rethink for Charles in terms of his slimmed-down monarchy and how best to serve the people. The mighty House of Windsor, which not long ago had the world’s longest reigning monarch at its helm, suddenly seemed very vulnerable.

While the king was supported by other family members who ensured the wheels kept turning, the absence of William and Kate was notable. “Without Catherine, it all seems rather flat. The future of the monarchy is William and Catherine,” says Patrick Jephson, the former private secretary to Diana, Princess of Wales. “And, as we know from any superficial study of the British royal family, it’s the women who pull the show together, who get out there and make things happen. So how fragile is the monarchy? Well, it’s as fragile as Catherine is and at the moment, we don’t know.”

Princess Kate attended Trooping the Colour, the king’s official birthday parade, on June 15, with only a day’s notice—a reminder of her inner strength, and popular import. Having “turned a corner,” says a source close to the princess, in her treatment, she felt well enough to ride in a carriage with her three children and stand alongside the king on the balcony. In a message on social media, the princess also gave a rare health update, sharing that she is still undergoing preventative chemotherapy and is making “good progress” but that she is “not out of the woods,” noting she has “good days and bad days.”

The palace took pains to stress that Kate’s appearance at Trooping the Colour did not signal a return to full-time work, but that she hopes to attend a handful of engagements over the summer. It was a glimmer of uplift in what has been an incredibly challenging year for the royal family.

“Without Catherine, it all seems rather flat,” says Princess Diana’s former private secretary. “So how fragile is the monarchy? Well, it’s as fragile as Catherine is.”

“The intense public emotion that greeted Catherine’s brave appearance at Trooping underlined her crucial importance to the monarchy,” says Jephson. “Without her, the institution would surely be reduced to a shadow of itself. Given the Windsors’ drastically thinned ranks, she is the crown’s best hope by far. She combines duty and beauty with a piercing vulnerability second only to Prince William’s mother.”

The late Queen Elizabeth had reigned for four decades before her infamous “annus horribilis” in 1992, when three of her children’s marriages fell apart and Windsor Castle caught fire. With this year, there has been a sense of foreboding that Charles’s annus infandus has come much too soon. Having acceded to the throne at the age of 73 (the oldest monarch in history to do so), the big question was whether he would be able to finish the work he had waited decades to start and seemed impatient to get on with. As well as the cornerstones of his life’s work, which include conservation and sustainability, Charles has earmarked the early years of his reign to reshape the royal household, shake up the royal residences, and future-proof the monarchy. According to sources close to the king, who recently announced plans to open more royal palaces to the public, he has been “frustrated” that his health problems are holding him up

Meanwhile, Kate’s cancer diagnosis has come as an even bigger shock. The 42-year-old mother was just hitting her stride as the new Princess of Wales, working in her field of early childhood development and looking forward to a busy schedule of engagements and overseas tours with William, when her life was turned upside down.

As she and her husband and their immediate families came to terms with the devastating news—no one beyond the Middletons and the king and queen were told about Kate’s cancer at first—they worked out how to tell their three children. According to an aide, Kate was determined to be honest with them and told them in a way they could understand.