Illness, scandal leave UK royal family looking depleted
LONDON (Reuters) – King Charles is due to make his first public appearance at a royal event today since his cancer diagnosis, but the likely absence of son Prince William and the heir’s wife Kate will spotlight how depleted the monarchy has become.
Buckingham Palace said the 75-year-old monarch would attend the traditional Easter Sunday church service at Windsor Castle alongside his wife Queen Camilla, one of the annual engagements usually attended by all the senior royals.
However, William, Kate, and their children George, 10, Charlotte, 8, and Louis, 5, will not attend after the Princess of Wales revealed last week that she had begun preventative chemotherapy for cancer following abdominal surgery in January.
“King Charles really wanted to have a slimmed-down monarchy when he took on the throne, but he never could have anticipated slimming down to where it is now,” said Erin Hill, People magazine’s senior royal editor. “This is going to definitely be a complicated time for the royal family.”
“Charles’desire for a slimmed-down” institution was designed to counter accusations it was bloated, with distant relatives living off taxpayer-funded handouts.
But there are now gaping holes in his immediate circle – most dramatically, with the departure of his younger son Prince Harry, 39, and wife Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, to the US three years ago.
Meanwhile, Charles’ younger brother Prince Andrew, 64, was banished from public life in 2019 over his friendship with the late US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
“Well, I think the ‘slimmeddown’ was said in a day when there were a few more people around to make that seem like a justifiable comment,” the king’s younger sister Princess Anne said in an interview last year.
“It doesn’t sound like a good idea from where I’m standing, I have to say. I’m not quite sure what else we can do,” Princess Anne said.
Of the remaining official working royals – those that carry out duties for the king, such as opening new buildings, giving out honors and meeting foreign dignitaries – many are now from the late Queen Elizabeth’s generation.