How Two Kings Have Dealt with Serious Illness
Transparency meant something entirely different to Charles III and his great-grandfather George V
As King Charles III led a small contingent of the royal family to the Easter Matins service at St. George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle, it was his first full-fledged public appearance since his cancer diagnosis and treatment were revealed on February 6th. The Easter service capped a series of symbolic moments beginning with photographs of the smiling king reading cards from well-wishers. In between we’ve seen images of him behind Palace walls—having an audience with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, accepting the credentials from new ambassadors to Britain, meeting with Korean War veterans, and this week chairing a discussion with interfaith leaders. The public has also glimpsed him in his Daimler while driving from Windsor to London.
Without disclosing either the nature of his cancer or the specific treatment, the seventy-five-year-old monarch has nevertheless appeared transparent, and he has kept the rumormongers at bay. Taking a different approach, his daughter-in-law, the forty-two-year-old Princess of Wales, announced her “planned abdominal surgery” in mid-January and completely withdrew from public view. Online conspiracy fanatics jumped into the breach, spinning unfounded theories of cover-up and trolling her with malicious abuse. In her unexpected video message on March 22nd, she shocked the world by disclosing her own cancer diagnosis and treatment—like the King, both unspecified. Her revelation succeeded in breaking the fever, and she and her family could find the “time and space” at their home in the Norfolk countryside without harassment.
In modern royal history, there is no precise parallel to Charles’s strategy, although the example of Charles’s grandfather, King George VI, comes to mind. His doctors withheld their diagnosis of terminal cancer and lied about their surgery to remove his left lung, which they said was to remedy “structural changes.” But a more intriguing example can be found in the severe illness of Charles’s great-grandfather, King George V, in 1928 and 1929 when he was absent from public duties for more than a year.
There was, in retrospect, a surprising amount of disclosure about his acute respiratory infection. Updates from his doctors every three or four hours were placed in a mahogany frame on the railings of Buckingham Palace. One photograph of the ailing king was startlingly vivid. Later public appearances were carefully stage managed. As I discovered in reading the diaries of King George V and his wife, Queen Mary, in the Royal Archives at Windsor Castle, his condition was far more serious than the public ever knew, even after he had supposedly recovered.
The sixty-three-year-old King’s health crisis began on November 21, 1928: “feverish cold, they call it,” he noted in his diary. He was so “very suffering,” wrote sixty-one-year-old Queen Mary, that she took over writing his diary as well as her own. He would not resume recording daily events in his hand until April 27, 1929.
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