Watch: King Charles Shares Why Queen Elizabeth “Chose” to Spend Her Final Days in Scotland
After Queen Elizabeth II‘s death in 2022, King Charles III first had to focus on restoring long-term confidence in the centuries-old institution that is the British monarchy.
The rest of the senior royals chugged along with him, never officially responding to the slings and arrows flying their way (some of them coming from inside the family) or otherwise wavering from their official duties as a new era got underway.
But knowing the late queen’s adage that she had “to be seen to be believed,” their cause was not helped when dual cancer diagnoses within the first few months of 2024 relegated both Charles and his daughter-in-law Kate Middleton to the bench right when it was more important than ever to be out and about, demonstrating that the royal ship was in steady hands.
Both Charles and Kate have long since returned to work, initially taking their respective returns to public-facing duties slowly—and on different timelines, as the Princess of Wales scaled her schedule way back for months—before getting back to it.
Yet while Queen Camilla has been fielding well-wishes for her husband ever since, she has just spoken for the first time about the earliest days after Charles’ diagnosis when she was “longing to let it out but obviously I couldn’t.”
Not least because, a week before Charles disclosed he was being treated for cancer, Camilla visited a Maggie’s cancer support center.
“Nobody could say anything at the time, that was quite difficult,” Camilla told Maggie’s chief executive Laura Lee in a video about the organization released Aug. 19, per Reuters. “I almost said something but, you know, I felt that it wasn’t the time to say.”
And she “looked at everybody who was suffering and all the relations,” she added, “and I think it made me realize even more how important these places were.”
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In the meantime, the 79-year-old noted, “Look at my husband, nothing stopped him. He just said, this is my way I’m going to cope with it.”
And Charles’ fortitude did not go unnoticed.
The reliably stoic Prince William acknowledged to reporters chronicling his trip to Cape Town, South Africa, in November 2024 that the unprecedented pile-up of health crises in his family had been “dreadful.”
“I’m so proud of my wife, I’m proud of my father, for handling the things that they have done,” the Prince of Wales said. “But from a personal family point of view, it’s been…yeah, it’s been brutal.”
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Business as usual ground to a halt in January 2024: Kensington Palace announced that Kate was going to be out of the public eye while recovering from abdominal surgery until at least after Easter on March 31. Hours later, Buckingham Palace shared that Charles was being treated for an enlarged prostate.
On Feb. 5, six days after he was discharged from the hospital, the palace stated that Charles had been diagnosed with cancer and would be stepping back from public-facing duties while undergoing treatment.
Seven speculation-packed weeks later—during which the palace had to politely shut down a rumor originating in Russia that Charles had died—Kate revealed in an unprecedented March 22 video message that she was in the “early stages” of preventative chemotherapy after post-op tests “found cancer had been present.”
And the first person to applaud her candor—aside from countless civilians on social media—was her father-in-law.
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The king was “so proud of Catherine for her courage in speaking as she did,” a palace spokesperson told NBC News. Charles had “remained in the closest contact with his beloved daughter-in-law throughout the past weeks” and he and Queen Camilla would “continue to offer their love and support to the whole family through this difficult time.”
Let alone his own difficult time.
While the king was in “good spirits,” nephew Peter Phillips said at the time, he also guessed that his uncle had to be “hugely frustrated.“
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“He’s frustrated that he can’t get on and do everything that he wants to be able to do,” the son of Charles’ sister Princess Anne told Sky News Australia in an interview published March 24 (and given before Kate spoke out). “But he’s very pragmatic. He understands that there’s a period of time that he really needs to focus on himself.”
Which apparently doesn’t come any more naturally to him than it did to his late mother whose commitment to her role remains the stuff of legend and a certain Emmy-winning Netflix drama.
“He is always pushing his staff and everybody, and his doctors and nurses, to be able to say, ‘Actually come on, you know, can I do this? Can I do that?'” Peter said. “So the overriding message would be that he’s obviously very keen to get back to a form of normality. And he’s probably frustrated that, recovery is taking a little longer than probably he would want it to.”
When the palace first shared his diagnosis, no timeline was offered as to how long Charles might be away from the public eye, though from day one it was understood that he still planned to tend to state business behind closed doors. (Incidentally, though the public still doesn’t know what type of cancer he has or what his treatment has entailed, sharing he was ill at all was a relatively transparent move on the palace’s part.)
As expected, William, Camilla, Anne and Charles’ youngest brother, Prince Edward, all pressed onward as the co-faces of the Firm in Charles’ (and Kate’s) absence.
“I’d like to take this opportunity to say thank you also for the kind messages of support for Catherine and for my father, especially in recent days,” William told an audience at an Air Ambulance Charity Gala Dinner in London on Feb. 7. “It means a great deal to us.”
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But it was only a couple of weeks before Charles resumed meeting in person with then-British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who—as seen in a video shared afterward of the usually private appointment—complimented the king on how well he looked as he walked into the Buckingham Palace office on Feb. 21.
“All done by mirrors,” Charles quipped.
More comfortable showing emotion than his impossibly stoic predecessor, the king told the PM (who was succeeded months later by Keir Starmer, who was replaced in July by Andy Burnham), “I’ve had so many wonderful messages and cards. It’s reduced me to tears most of the time.”
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Photographers were on hand to capture snippets of Charles at work in Buckingham Palace that March: Meeting with Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt; on a video call the next day with then-Canadian PM Justin Trudeau while sitting at the desk that belonged to his late father, Prince Philip; greeting ambassadors from Algeria and Mauritania in the 1844 Room; meeting alums of the Windsor Leadership Trust weeks later.
During a two-day trip to Northern Ireland, Camilla told a well-wisher at the Arcadia deli in Belfast, per Hello!, “He was very disappointed he couldn’t come.” And in response to a joke about men not being “the best patients,” Camilla assured, “I try to keep him in order.”
She also became the first-ever monarch’s consort to appear in their spouse’s stead at the Royal Maundy Service on March 28, 2024, with Charles expressing his regrets that he couldn’t be there in a prerecorded video message.
“In this country, we are blessed by all the different services that exist for our welfare,” the king said, per a recording shared by NBC News. “But over and above these organizations and their selfless staff, we need and benefit greatly from those that extend the hand of friendship to us, especially in a time of need.”
And Charles knows he needs to be not only hale, but also squarely in the public eye, in order to return the favor.
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Charles and Camilla sat apart from the rest of the congregation at St. George’s Chapel on Easter to avoid any stress on his health during what was his first public event since his hospitalization.
But less than a month later, the palace said the king would be returning to public duties.
He was at Royal Ascot in June 2024 and participated fully in Trooping the Colour (the official celebration of the monarch’s birthday, despite him being born on Nov. 14), and he was traveling around the U.K. soon enough.
“I’m not too bad,” he told a well-wisher in August 2024 while visiting with families affected by the July 29 knife attack in Southport in which three children were killed during a Taylor Swift-themed dance class.
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But being cleared to leave the country was the goal, and that milestone came in October 2024, when Charles and Camilla traveled to Australia for their first state visit to the Commonwealth nation since becoming king and queen.
Back at Buckingham Palace hosting a reception for Britain’s 2024 Olympians on Nov. 7, Charles shared that he was staying fit with a twice-a-day exercise regimen incorporating squats and a pull-up bar.
And in December 2025, the 77-year-old said in a message aired during Channel 4’s Stand Up To Cancer broadcast, “Today I am able to share with you the good news that thanks to early diagnosis, effective intervention and adherence to ‘doctors’ orders,’ my own schedule of cancer treatment can be reduced in the New Year.”
Now Charles is back to making jokes about the perils of aging in general, telling a 104-year-old World War II veteran during a July visit to the military charity Heroes On The Water Isle of Man that he wasn’t doing “too bad.”
“But I don’t know how you do it,” the king quipped. “It’s bad enough at my age.”
Advised that the secret was to just keep going, Charles cracked,” It is terrible because bits keep dropping off!”
Keep reading for a rundown of the year’s royal news:
Courtesy of Netflix
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Instagram/Meghan Markle
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(Originally published March 30, 2024, at 3 a.m. PT)
