Double blow to the family’s health threatens to scupper hopes of a royal annus mirabilis
Just when things were looking up, three of the four most senior royals will be out of action
The Royal family had hoped 2024 would be a vast improvement on last year, but the double whammy of the King’s operation and the Princess of Wales’s abdominal surgery has once again highlighted the perils of a slimmed-down monarchy.
Having endured 2023 without Queen Elizabeth II, coped with the Duke of Sussex’s autobiography Spare, and pulled off the first coronation in 70 years, things were finally looking up. Royal tours were back on, with the
Prince and Princess of Wales planning to travel to Rome in the spring – their first joint overseas visit in two years the Caribbean trip in March 2022.
The monarch and Queen Camilla also hit the ground running with talk of a visit to Australia and the launch of the Queen’s Reading Room podcast.
But yesterday’s unexpected royal health announcements – made within 90 minutes of each other – now threaten to derail what the King had hoped would be a period of stability for the fledgling Carolean era.
With the Prince of Wales, 41, expected to down tools to look after his 42-year-old wife as she spends the next few months recuperating at their Windsor home, three of the four most senior royals will be out of action.
This wouldn’t have been so much of a problem in the old days, when the Duke and Duchess of Sussex and the Duke of York were still supporting as “working” royals. Indeed, a contingency plan is already in place for these sorts of emergencies – with five counsellors of state, including the Queen, appointed to cover for the King should he be temporarily unable to undertake his official duties due to illness or absence abroad.
Yet the trouble is that the three adult royals in the current line of succession after Prince William’s children – the Dukes of Sussex and York, and Princess Beatrice – do not have a public role. The heir to the throne’s absence, albeit temporary, makes the King’s supporting cast look more slender than ever. Queen Camilla is the only Counsellor of State who can feasibly be called upon to step up while her husband undergoes a corrective procedure on his prostate next week.
The Princess Royal, who is not a Counsellor of State on account of only being 16th in the line of succession, did warn of the pitfalls last March when she was asked about her brother’s plans to strip back the royal workforce to make it more “value for money”.
“Well, I think the ‘slimmed down’ was said in a day when there were a few more people around,” replied the grandmother of five, 73. “It doesn’t sound like a good idea.”
The problem of too few royals to go round has been compounded by Princess Alexandra, 87, scaling back her workload due to her advancing years, along with the Duke of Kent (although to be fair to the late Queen’s 88-year-old cousin, he did still manage 69 royal engagements in 2023).
Aides have been careful to ensure that the King and the Queen, at 75 and 76, are not overloaded as they adjust to life on the throne. One suggested that Queen Camilla has struggled with the newfound pace, while the transition has left the King feeling “anxious”.
The Queen undertook 233 public duties last year, behind Princess Anne on 457, the King on 425 and the Duke of Edinburgh (Prince Edward) on 297.
The Prince and Princess of Wales have also faced criticism for only carrying out a few more engagements than the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester, both in their seventies.
They have made no secret of their desire to be hands-on parents to Prince George, 10, Princess Charlotte, eight, and Prince Louis, five, which goes some way to explaining why the Prince has chosen to put his immediate family before his commitments to the “firm”.
The Princess’s prolonged absence will arguably be felt most keenly. As the wife and mother of future kings, she has been playing a pivotal role. She is not just one of the most popular royals, but like her late mother-in-law Diana, has enough star quality to keep the institution on the front pages.
Renowned for “never having put a foot wrong”, she garnered public sympathy after being targeted by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex in their Netflix series and memoir.
This week, Robert Hardman’s new biography of the King revealed how the Prince of Wales was furious over his brother’s “blatant attack” against his wife. The Duke of Sussex said in the Netflix documentary that royal men “marry someone who fits the mould – as opposed to somebody who you perhaps are destined to be with”.
In Charles III: New King. New Court,
Hardman writes: “For William, this was the lowest of the low.”
Hardman describes the Prince as “mortified” by his brother’s “casual betrayal” of fraternal secrets in Spare, while claiming the King was also “deeply hurt” by Harry’s accusations.
The past 12 months, indeed the past three years, have proved stressful for the royals. It couldn’t come at a worse time for a family yearning for an annus mirabilis after the horrors of Megxit.