HAS according to royal commentators, Charles III has, until now, been flawless. It was not a given: when he became king in September 2022, upon the death of his mother, Elizabeth II, many underlined the difficulty of the task that awaited him. The queen had just celebrated an exceptional jubilee – seventy years of reign – and she was immensely popular. His eldest son, who remained in the antechamber of power for half a century, was a more controversial figure, respected for his long-standing commitment to the environment, but criticized for his interventionism and his turbulent private life.
The monarch has inscribed his actions in tradition: he maintained the audiences at the start of the week with the Prime Minister, the pre-recorded Christmas message, the magnificence of the coronation and the numerous “public engagements” dear to his mother, who attended is constrained almost to the end.
There is, however, one area where this already elderly king – he is 75 years old – has innovated, and that is that of royal communication: he has modernized it, even if the exercise of transparency remains limited. The most recent example was the revelation of his cancer on February 6. The king has “a form of cancer”, announced Buckingham Palace, without specifying which one, but suggesting that it was not prostate cancer, even if the treatment he had just undergone, during which his diagnosis was established, was aimed to correct an enlarged prostate.
During the last year of the reign of his mother, who died at the age of 96, nothing transpired about his health, with the exception of these “mobility problems” which Buckingham put forward to sometimes cancel his public appearances at the last moment. When the queen was hospitalized at the end of 2021, her official communication mentioned “preliminary investigations” and specified: “His morale is good. » His death was attributed to “old age”just like that of her husband, Prince Philip, in April 2021. The lung cancer of her father, King George VI, was not revealed until his death in February 1952. In September 1951, the monarch had undergone a total removal of the left lung, but the surgeons had mentioned “structural anomalies” of the lung.
Cancer stigma lifted
Among the Windsors, the famous adage “Never complain, never explain” (“Never complain, never explain”) has long been the norm. But the stigma of cancer has recently been lifted in the UK. Celebrities, but also ordinary Britons, have spoken out on social networks or in the media, giving a voice to the nearly 400,000 people diagnosed each year in the country.
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