Hello, royal watchers. This is your regular dose of royal news and analysis. Reading this online? Sign up here to get this delivered to your inbox.
When it emerged almost a year ago that Catherine, Princess of Wales, and King Charles had health concerns, it was a rare royal moment.
Not one, but two, senior members of the Royal Family — with varying degrees of openness — let it be known on the same day that they needed hospital care. In time, it emerged, they both received a cancer diagnosis.
The dual illnesses and their effects on the family were at the heart of how royal duties were carried out last year, revealing and reinforcing challenges the House of Windsor faces in 2025 and beyond.
All told, 2024 was an “unexpectedly difficult” year for the Royal Family, said Craig Prescott, a constitutional expert and lecturer in law at Royal Holloway, University of London.
“Clearly, it’s been dominated with the cancer diagnoses of the King and the Princess of Wales.”
A notable part of how the Royal Family navigated the illnesses was the information vacuum in the absence of official word about Catherine for several weeks after her abdominal surgery in January. Rumours swirled wildly, particularly on social media, and an edited photograph of her with her children fuelled the maelstrom.
A photo-editing scandal has caused rampant rumours and conspiracies around the whereabouts of the Princess of Wales to swell online. About That producer Lauren Bird breaks down how the Royal Family’s attempt to calm public speculation about Kate Middleton backfired, resulting in a loss of control over their public image.
“You could see that the answer was for them to take charge,” Prescott said in an interview.
“You saw that with the statement that she released about her revealing that she had cancer and then the video … when she said that she cleared her cancer treatment. That really just shifted things … it shows you … that if you take control, then these things can be managed.”
Catherine, the Princess of Wales, says in a video released to her social media pages that tests after her surgery revealed ‘cancer had been present,’ and that she is in the early stages of preventive chemotherapy.
In the ripple effects of the cancer diagnoses for Charles and Catherine, there were other implications, Prescott suggests.
“We saw, actually, the risk that comes with a slimmed-down, smaller Royal Family.”
Charles has long been thought to favour the idea of fewer senior members carrying out royal duties. But with two of the most senior members out of the public eye — for varying lengths of time — the few other senior working members took on higher profiles and more engagements.
“What we experienced in the U.K. was something that we really haven’t for a very, very long time, which is having a very small Royal Family with relatively few members doing public duties,” said Prescott.
In a sense, he suggested, “that was fine for the purposes of 2024.”
“But if you cast your eye forward to the future, if it’s just King William and Queen Catherine on the throne and maybe Prince George and Princess Charlotte doing engagements, then that’s a very different idea of monarchy.
“Maybe it was a little preview of what … might come with the idea of a much smaller Royal Family.”
Toronto-based royal author and historian Carolyn Harris says she thinks the biggest challenge the Royal Family faces this year is that there are fewer younger working members.
For example, Sophie, Duchess of Edinburgh, who saw her profile rise considerably in 2024, will turn 60 on Jan. 20. Her husband, Charles’s younger brother, Prince Edward, hit that milestone birthday last March.
Princess Anne, Charles’s younger sister and another royal who was exceedingly busy publicly in 2024 — faced her own health challenge after an apparent injury involving a horse. She will turn 75 in August. King Charles himself is 76, and Queen Camilla is 77.
“Until Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis are old enough to undertake royal engagements, there’s going to be about a decade where William and Catherine are the only working members of the Royal Family under the age of 60,” said Harris.
Prescott also looks at the gap between William and Catherine and the next generation and sees it posing a challenge for how the Royal Family will engage with younger people as they try to combat a long, slow decline in popularity of the monarchy as an institution since the “highpoint of 2012,” when Queen Elizabeth marked 60 years on the throne.
For people who are 18 to 30, “there’s no member of the Royal Family that they can identify with,” said Prescott.
“One of the strengths of the monarchy was always that each generation have their own royals, but in a sense, now you have a generation that don’t have any royals,” he said.
“How you connect with that group is very difficult. And of course, they are digital natives, they live on the internet. They don’t live in a sort of British culture in the same way. Everything is global to them, so the monarchy is just not as big a presence in their lives.”
As Harris looks back on 2024, she sees a “very subdued” year for the royals, particularly given the relatively few times members of the family went overseas.
“When we look at the royal year, usually we see multiple high-profile royal tours that attract a great deal of attention, and because of King Charles III and the Princess of Wales’s cancer, we just didn’t see that level of international travel,” Harris said.
She predicts a lot of interest going into 2025 around whether there is a “a big revival” of international royal tours.
“We’ve been seeing the Royal Family in the past couple of years in a very British context a lot of the time. And I think there will be interest in the Royal Family on the world stage, especially as there are a lot of delicate diplomatic situations at this time.”
King Charles is expected to travel internationally later this month, when he will reportedly go to Auschwitz to mark the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camp.
“One of the major themes of King Charles III’s reign has been commemorating these very important and meaningful moments from Second World War history while these events are still within living memory,” said Harris.
That theme is likely to continue later this year as the 80th anniversaries of the end of the conflict in Europe and Japan are marked.
Prescott expects events in particular to mark VE-Day — or Victory in Europe Day — in May to be a high point in the 2025 royal calendar.
“It is a reminder of the need to keep peace in Europe as well. So … in a sense, it’s got a greater contemporary relevance than might have been the case 30 years ago.”
What about a visit to Canada?
Don’t expect to see Canada on any list of high-profile royal visits by King Charles in the near future.
The political turmoil in Ottawa — and the potential for a spring federal election — mean any prospect of an official visit in the next few months is highly unlikely.
“If there’s an election campaign underway, we’re not going to see a royal visit to Canada,” said Harris.
Planning for a visit to Canada by King Charles had been underway early last year, but was postponed after his cancer diagnosis.
If there is an election later in the spring or summer, that could leave open the opportunity for a fall visit.
If an election were sooner, then Harris sees potential for an earlier visit.
“Canada Day is a very popular time for royal visits,” she said.
Other factors could influence the timing of an official visit by the King.
“It will also depend on the priorities of whoever is the next prime minister,” said Harris.
But she doesn’t rule out the possibility of lower-profile royal visits to Canada this year.
“I think working visits by Princess Anne or by the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh — we will likely see those continuing.”
Members of other royal families might also visit Canada.
‘”With key events in the Second World War being commemorated in the coming year, we may see European royalty visiting Canada, as there was a lot of European royalty who took refuge in Canada during the Second World War,” said Harris.
“So we may well see visits from royalty from the Netherlands, royalty from Luxembourg.”
-
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau did have a moment with a member of the Royal Family this week as he sat beside Prince Edward at the funeral for former U.S. president Jimmy Carter in Washington, D.C., on Thursday.
Controversy keeps coming for Prince Andrew
The scandals and embarrassment surrounding Prince Andrew continue apace, whether through reports of close ties he cultivated with an alleged Chinese spy or an allegation to police that he used a false name in a business matter.
Andrew, 64, stepped back from official royal duties after his disastrous BBC interview in 2019 regarding his friendship with the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. He also agreed to settle a lawsuit in which he was accused of sexually abusing a 17-year-old girl supplied to him by Epstein.
His reputation sank like a stone. Public appearances were generally limited to family occasions.
“There was a sense you thought: ‘Right, OK, he’s out of sight, he’s out of mind. What else can he do?'” Prescott said.
And then came the Chinese spy allegations, and even family events became out of the question, with Andrew staying away from Christmas celebrations a couple of weeks ago at King Charles’s Sandringham estate.
“It’s serious fundamentally, you know, the idea of someone the intelligence services think is a Chinese spy getting very close to a member of the Royal Family,” said Prescott.
“This is an enormous embarrassment to him and the monarchy in general.”
This week, Graham Smith, CEO of the anti-monarchy group Republic, reported Prince Andrew to police over an alleged filing of a false name in a business matter.
“While it’s unclear what motivation there was or that there were any further offences committed, it is an offence to file false information,” Smith’s complaint said, according to a news release from the group.
“Given Andrew’s high profile and the serious challenges of fighting fraud committed through false filings, I trust the police will pursue this matter without fear or favour.”
Prescott isn’t sure the complaint will go anywhere.
“I have looked at this and under the law that applied at the time, it wasn’t a criminal offence to give false particulars,” Prescott said.
“But … it’s just another example of Prince Andrew’s unusual business affairs.”
Harris expects coverage and attention focused on Andrew will continue to be a challenge for King Charles in 2025.
“Both King Charles and Prince William would like the headlines to be focused on the work they’re undertaking as King and Prince of Wales,” Harris said.
“They don’t want the Royal Family to be discussed in the press through the context of scandals associated with Prince Andrew, and I think that’s going to be an ongoing issue.”
Royally quotable
“To the most incredible wife and mother. The strength you’ve shown over the last year has been remarkable. George, Charlotte, Louis and I are so proud of you. Happy Birthday, Catherine. We love you. W”
— Prince William, in a social media post on Thursday marking the 43rd birthday of his wife, Catherine, Princess of Wales.
To the most incredible wife and mother. The strength you’ve shown over the last year has been remarkable. George, Charlotte, Louis and I are so proud of you. Happy Birthday, Catherine. We love you. W pic.twitter.com/VIW5v2aKlu
Royal reads
-
A Liberal backbencher is promising to make Canada “a sovereign republic” and dump the monarchy if elected by his party to replace Prime Minster Justin Trudeau. [CBC]
-
Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, who live in California, are encouraging aid for L.A. fires victims. [USA Today]
-
Prince William has agreed to end the last feudal restrictions on land ownership in parts of his hereditary Duchy of Cornwall estate after decades of complaints from residents. [The Guardian]
-
Former bosses of King Charles’s charity have been criticized by a charity watchdog over their handling of a series of controversial dealings with wealthy donors. [The Guardian]
-
The Duchess of Sussex will star in a new Netflix series, but so far, With Love, Meghan, isn’t getting much love. [CBC]
-
An immersive artwork will explore the intimate relationship between Queen Elizabeth I and her courtier, Robert Dudley, the first Earl of Leicester, that has fascinated people for centuries. [The Guardian]
-
In Denmark, King Frederick has changed the country’s royal coat of arms to display symbols of Greenland and the Faroe Islands more prominently — in an apparent rebuke to U.S. president-elect Donald Trump. [The Independent]
Sign up here to have The Royal Fascinator newsletter land in your inbox every other Friday.
I’m always happy to hear from you. Send your questions, ideas, comments, feedback and notes to royalfascinator@cbc.ca. Problems with the newsletter? Please let me know about any typos, errors or glitches.
