by Queen Elizabeth II liked to say that she needed to be seen to be believed. Now it is up to her son, King Charles III, to put that principle to the test, after a cancer diagnosis that will keep him out of the public eye for the foreseeable future.
For a family that has cultivated its public image through thousands of appearances a year (ribbon cuttings, ship launchings, charity galas, investiture ceremonies, etc.), Charles’ sidelining may finally force the royals to rethink how They project themselves into a society. era of social media.
The king’s illness is the latest blow to the British royal family, which has seen its ranks depleted by death (Elizabeth and her husband, Prince Philip), scandal (Prince Andrew), self-exile (Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan), and other health problems (Catherine, Prince William’s wife).
Charles, who is 75, took part in 425 royal engagements in 2023, his first full year on the throne, according to a tally by The Daily Telegraph. That made him the second-hardest working royal after his younger sister, Princess Anne, who turned 457. They were both busier than the previous year, when Isabel, although in the twilight of her life, still appeared sporadically in public.
While Anne, 73, shows few signs of slowing down and William plans to return to public duties while his wife convalesces at home from abdominal surgery, even a temporary absence of the king from the public stage would put great pressure on the small group. of family members. working royals.
“There aren’t many of them,” said Peter Hunt, a former BBC royal correspondent. “There are only two of them who are under 50 years old. They have to decide whether to continue fulfilling the queen’s mantra. What is the basic minimum of commitments they must make to achieve this?
The answer to that conundrum, royal observers argue, may lie in technology and social media. During the coronavirus pandemic, when Elizabeth was sequestered at Windsor Castle, she held meetings via Zoom calls, and became comfortable enough with it to make jokes with pixelated faces on her computer screen. .
Buckingham Palace’s use of social media can also amplify in-person exposure to family members. The royal family’s Instagram account has more than 13 million followers and its X account has more than five million.
For young people, who spend hours a day online and follow their favorite celebrities on social media, the presence of royalty to inaugurate a new elementary school or health clinic in the neighborhood may not matter as much as it does to their parents or grandparents.
The biggest burden of the king’s illness is likely to fall on his heir William, 41. He has worked to carve out a role for himself on issues ranging from climate change to homelessness. It’s unclear how much time he will be able to devote to those causes while he also works as a surrogate for his father.
Ed Owens, a royal historian who recently published “After Elizabeth: Can the Monarchy Save Itself?”, argues that royals should steer clear of these charitable activities in any case, because they interfere with the government’s proper role in society. .
“The culture of real philanthropy,” Owens wrote, “has too often capitalized on the gaps exposed in a broken welfare state.”
William has also jealously guarded his family’s privacy: Kensington Palace, where he has his office, offered few details about Catherine’s condition. There were no photographs of the couple’s three young children (George, Charlotte and Louis) visiting her mother in the hospital.
That approach contrasted with that of his father, who approved the disclosure of an unusual number of details about his prostate treatment and most recent cancer diagnosis. Scrutiny on William will inevitably increase, experts said, as he takes a more central place in the Windsor family hierarchy.
Another question arises over the role of Prince Harry, the king’s youngest son, who fell out bitterly with his father and brother after he and Meghan stepped back from royal duties and moved to California in 2020.
Harry arrived in London on Tuesday to visit his father, leading royal watchers to think the crisis could spark a reconciliation between him and his family. But Harry didn’t bring his own family and it wasn’t even clear where he would stay; the king evicted him from his residence, Frogmore Cottage, last year.
While Charles will cede the public stage for now, the palace has been at pains to emphasize that he remains a constitutional sovereign with full rights. He will continue to meet weekly with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and see other visitors. He will continue to review the official documents that are delivered to him daily in a traditional red box.
There are currently no plans to appoint state councillors, who could perform some of the king’s duties if he were incapacitated by illness. Among those in line for that role are Queen Camilla and William.
There are some rituals that only a seated monarch can perform. Charles must accede to a request from the Prime Minister to dissolve Parliament before the general election. He must also ask the leader of the majority party to form a government.
None of this is hypothetical in a year that is expected to include an election and in which the opposition Labor Party currently has a roughly 20-point lead over the Conservatives in opinion polls.
Elizabeth considered these duties so solemn that she mustered up the courage, two days before her death at age 96, to meet Boris Johnson, the outgoing prime minister, and Liz Truss, his successor, at Balmoral Castle in Scotland.
Sunak, who spoke to Charles about his cancer, sought to calm concerns about the king’s prognosis. Speaking to BBC Radio 5 Live on Tuesday, he said: “Thankfully this was caught in time.”
A spokesperson for 10 Downing Street later clarified that Sunak was not passing on new information but was referring to the palace statement, which noted the “swift intervention” of Charles’s medical team.
Whatever his prognosis, the king’s cancer pushes the royal family into uncharted territory. Historians noted that when Charles’s grandfather, King George VI, had cancer surgery in 1951, the palace told the public almost nothing about his condition. He died five months later, putting his daughter Elizabeth on the throne, 72 years ago Tuesday.
When he died in September 2022, his death certificate indicated “old age” as the cause. Gyles Brandreth, a friend of the royal family, later said in a biography of the queen that she had been suffering from a form of bone marrow cancer.
Choosing to be more open about his health issues, Charles has stepped away from his long-standing family practice. He did so, the palace said, “in the hope that he can help public understanding of all those around the world affected by cancer.”
Whether the king can refute the queen’s mantra that it has to be seen to be believed is another question.
