When Queen Elizabeth was admitted to hospital overnight for a ‘preliminary assessment’ in October 2021, the first the public heard about her health problems was a front-page story in the Sun.
The monarch may have hoped there would be no fuss, but the fact that royal reporters had been told she needed to rest, but not that she was in hospital, led to feverish speculation about the true state of her health – and criticism the palace. “confidentiality”.
So it is perhaps unsurprising that the royal household took a markedly different approach on Wednesday, with twin announcements, just over an hour apart, that the Princess of Wales and King Charles were being treated for health problems.
Catherine, 42, was admitted to a private London hospital on Tuesday for a planned abdominal operation, Kensington Palace said in a statement, and she was doing well. No further details were given about the princess’s “private medical information”, although the palace said there were no concerns about cancer.
Perhaps wanting to avoid a second day of speculation about the royal family’s health, that announcement was quickly followed by another from the Buckingham Palace press team. “Like thousands of men every year,” the king was treated for an enlarged prostate, the report said, stressing that his condition is also benign. The king, 75, will undergo a “correction procedure” next week.
While the king’s public appearances will be postponed “for a short period of recovery”, the princess’s operation is even more grueling. She will stay in hospital for ten to fourteen days and it is not expected that she will be well enough to give public performances again until after Easter.
In keeping with the couple’s attempt to be hands-on parents – at least by royal family standards – the Prince of Wales, her husband, will also step back from public duties during the time she is in hospital and immediately thereafter . back home to be with their three young children.
They have also postponed any plans to travel internationally in the coming months.
During her pregnancies, the princess suffered from hyperemesis gravidarum, a form of extreme morning sickness, and was hospitalized in 2012 while pregnant with Prince George. She announced her second pregnancy in 2014 earlier than planned because she was being treated for the condition.
It was “completely rotten,” she said in a podcast in 2020, add: “I was really sick – I wasn’t eating the things I should be eating – yet the body was still able to take all the good out of my body and grow new life, which I find fascinating.”
The public was well informed when the Duke of Edinburgh was hospitalized several times in his later years. Prince Philip spent four weeks in hospital after heart surgery in March 2021; he died the following month.
Similarly, when Queen Camilla underwent surgery in a London hospital in 2007, reporters were informed that the then Duchess of Cornwall had undergone a hysterectomy.