How Charles’ Cancer, and ‘King William,’ Are Rewiring the Royal Family

It’s hard to understand almost anything that has happened in the royal story since February 5, 2024—the day King Charles announced to the world he had cancer—unless you are privy to an extraordinary assumption whispered in the corridors of British power.

It is this: When King Charles III ascended the throne, most people expected he would live as long as his mother (96) or father (99). Since his diagnosis with cancer (of a still-unidentified type), few but the most ardent optimists really believe that any more.

Few of us can predict the time of our own deaths, let alone that of someone else’s, and there is no doubt that the king is doing fantastically well in his battle against cancer.

His resilience has been extraordinary, the evidence of this being his forthcoming tour to Australia, kicking off in under two weeks’ time. It has been trimmed and cut back a little but in the dark days of February, when his cancer was announced, few thought he would be jetting off to the Antipodes eight months later.

The combined might of the British medical establishment is throwing everything it has at his disease: cutting-edge treatments and, of course, this being Charles, his beloved herbs and natural healing remedies are all also being deployed.

Suzanne Plunkett/Pool/Reuters

But even if Charles is ultimately declared to be in full remission, when he broke with centuries of royal tradition and announced he had cancer he fired the starting pistol on what courtiers euphemistically term the “change of reign.”

The planning and positioning for the reign of King William V, necessarily and behind the scenes, began—and it will be very hard to put that genie back in the bottle.

Charles’ family were told the truth: that it was serious. That, of course, is why Prince Harry flew over from California three days later, and that is why the king agreed to meet him.

William also sprang into action. Just days after the news was made public he appointed a new private secretary, Ian Patrick, an experienced former diplomat who had worked for the Foreign Office for eight years. The implication was clear: William would be stepping up to a bigger, more global role. William’s plans, however, were then brutally knocked aside by his own wife’s cancer diagnosis which forced him to retreat from public life, and international travel, for several months.

Now, of course, with Kate’s recovery, William is back and has a much higher profile than his father, who has spent the last few weeks gathering and conserving his strength for the Australia tour. William will resume long haul international travel when he travels to South Africa in early November for the Earthshot Awards. It promises to be a high-profile affair.

For Harry, the changed potential timeframe for the reign of his father poses particular problems, because for Harry there can be no meaningful rehabilitation, allowing him to maximize his impact as a global social activist, “showing up and doing good,” as he and his team like to say, without a peace deal being hammered out with the institution of his family.

And the truth is Harry is much more likely to be able to make a deal with King Charles III than King William V.

The change of reign won’t really affect wife Meghan Markle, who seems quite happy being implacably at war with the British royal family.

Chris Jackson/Getty Images

But speak to sources close to Harry, and it’s quite clear that, his successful monetization of it aside, he is tired of playing a bit part in a narrative of family drama and conflict and would like nothing more than to recover his reputation—and perhaps even become known, in time, as a serious player in the philanthropic world.

One royal source told me that some insiders believe Harry went about cashing in on his family’s secrets in the expectation that he would be able to work his way back into the royal fold because of his father’s affection for his “darling boy.”

“He thought he might have 20 years with his father as the ultimate authority to mend those broken bridges,” the source said. The source added that if a settlement were made with his father, William would not want to waste time or political capital trying to rewrite it when he became king.

When asked if they thought Harry would have written the book he wrote, or have publicly accused members of the family—one of whom was later revealed to be Kate Middleton—of being racist if he suspected Kate might be queen alongside his ‘nemesis,’ King William, a few short years later, the source said, “Exactly the point. I doubt it.”

Executive power and influence is already flowing William’s way.

Anyone who doubts that only has to look at the glossy Instagram video William and Kate published last month to announce her recovery from cancer. It wasn’t signed off by the king, and featured not Charles, but Kate’s parents, Mike and Carole.

Chris Jackson/Getty Images

To get away with such cheek showed William and Kate have an instinctive understanding—even though they would never acknowledge it and their office did not dignify The Daily Beast’s enquiries on the matter with a response—of how the power dynamic has shifted since the king’s diagnosis.

Charles’ staff, who always decline to comment on Charles’ diagnosis and maintained that stance in response to The Daily Beast’s enquiries for this article, are understandably protective of anyone speculating about the “boss’s” health.

However, there is a solid argument to be made that discussing the death of a king is a legitimate and practical matter of public interest, precisely because of the hereditary principle, the anachronism which the Windsors have spent their entire existence upholding and defending.

And anyway, such squeamishness does not change the fact that the entire royal firmament realigned on Feb. 5, 2024. Intriguingly, The Daily Beast has been told that some of Charles’ advisers, instinctively preferring not to let daylight in on the magic, felt the announcement he had cancer was politically naïve.

Changing of the guard

The inevitably diminished authority of a dying monarch is the reason palaces are usually so obsessively secretive about a monarch’s health. We saw Queen Elizabeth II shrinking on our television screens every week in her final years, but the palace boldly insisted she was suffering from nothing worse than “episodic mobility problems.”

The courtier who came up with that phrase once told The Royalist that they suspected it was their most repeated string of words, beating, even, another of their formulations: “Some recollections may vary.”

When confronted with soundly sourced information by this reporter that the queen was dying of bone cancer, that she could barely see, hardly hear and was, periodically, confused, they furiously refused to comment. I posted a hint of the story in The Daily Beast anyway, and was promptly knocked off palace briefing lists and calls.

Jane Barlow/Pool via Reuters

When the queen died, the palace unofficially confirmed the death had been from bone cancer.

George VI’s death from lung cancer was kept so secret it caught even his own daughter by surprise. Princess Elizabeth became queen while staying at a tree house in a game park on an official tour of Kenya and had to race home for the funeral. Indeed, some say even the king himself was not told how ill he was, which seems to be taking secrecy a bit far.

The deaths of kings have always mattered. Shows such as Game of Thrones revolve around them: the run-up, the death, the aftermath.

One of the most compelling scenes in the dramatization of the Wolf Hall books is where King Henry VIII, played by Damien Lewis, falls off his horse in a jousting contest. He stops breathing and is believed to be dead.

His right-hand man, Thomas Cromwell, rushes to his side in a packed tent.

Everything has changed. One of his rivals jostles and taunts him, “Cromwell, you are a dead man! A dead man!”

Cromwell leaps into action. Where is the queen? What of the papists? A messenger is sent “up country,” and told to get there “before this news.” Another ally is given up, on the spot, as dead. His son and aide, Gregory, suggests amid the chaos they flee for the ports before they are closed.

And then, Henry splutters back into life. Cromwell swiftly unwinds his orders (including sending another messenger to catch the first one).

There have been moments this year when courtiers, family, and aides have all felt that same surge of what-happens-now horror and doubt that Cromwell felt gazing in shock and horror at his unbreathing king. They haven’t been racing for the ports, but few would blame them, given the brutal way Queen Elizabeth’s staff were sacked upon her death, for quietly updating their LinkedIn profiles.

Ruben Sprich/Reuters

Harry—whose office did not want to comment to The Daily Beast—does not want to trade the glorious California sunshine and the freedom he, his wife, and kids have for a return to the stultifying goldfish bowl of royal life. Stories saying he is searching for a path back to it are nonsense, reliable sources have told The Daily Beast. But he would like to be a regular part of the philanthropic/social activism space again, rather than being a fixture of the gossip rags.

But such rehabilitation depends on reconciliation, and for that, Charles holds the key.

Luckily for him, Charles adores Harry. He is devastated by the split in the family and would dearly love to mend it, not just for personal reasons, but also for his legacy: Charles the Unifier/Healer/Magnanimous sounds much better than what he seems set for at the moment, Charles the Very Unlucky.

Other royals have a lot at stake too: For Charles’ wife, Queen Camilla, who has been tolerated by William for the sake of stability and unity, but has never been liked, let alone loved by him, the death of her husband would raise two very profound questions common to many dowager duchesses: Where will she live and what will she live on?

Toby Melville/Reuters

Part of the answer to that one involves Charles’ unsavory brother, Prince Andrew, who is being put under pressure by the king to move out of his palatial 30-room home, Royal Lodge, formerly the residence of the notoriously extravagant Queen Mother.

Many people have wondered why Charles is exerting all this energy and political will on such a trifling matter.

Some reports say the real reason is that Charles wants him gone in case he dies, so that Camilla can take the property as a dowager house.

Toby Melville/Reuters

Andrew has other ideas. One of his friends told me recently that he is seeking to “run out the clock” on Charles. He is fighting the attempts to evict him in the knowledge that, come the change of reign, kicking an obstinate prince out of a crumbling palace will be fairly low on King William’s list of priorities.

What will Charles’ sister, Princess Anne, do? Often described as the “hardest-working royal,” her raison d’être is zooming around the country squeezing in 500-plus engagements a year. William has made it very clear he doesn’t see that as the family’s role anymore, preferring a tiny number of limited, high-impact engagements and events to the paternalistic, seen-to-be-believed, helicopter-riding royal attitude of old.

Chris Radburn/Reuters

The king’s other brother, Prince Edward and Edward’s wife, Sophie, Duchess of Edinburgh, who are neither great friends nor enemies with Charles, have successfully won the trust and affection of William and Kate and they are likely to be rewarded with a promotion when William’s reign begins. This elevation may even see their kids, Viscount James and Lady Louise, made the first new working royals in a generation.

But Harry’s decision to serve up a blaze of recriminations targeted so heavily at William and Kate upon exiting the family now looks to be a disastrous miscalculation.

In the great poker game of royal life no-one is more in need of changing out their entire deck of hands than Prince Harry.

He knows full well he needs to do it before the dealer changes.

And if that means playing nice, it seems a compromise he is prepared to make.