So Charlie Windsor has cancer of some sort.
King Charles has been diagnosed with cancer and is already receiving treatment that will prevent him from undertaking public duties for the immediate future, Buckingham Palace has announced.
Although no further details about what type of cancer he has are being released at this stage, Buckingham Palace said it was not prostate cancer. It was discovered when the 75-year-old monarch recently underwent treatment at the London Clinic for a benign enlarged prostate.
Buckingham Palace said the king “remains wholly positive about his treatment”.
He began regular outpatient treatments on Monday, and although he has been forced to postpone public-facing engagements, he will continue with his constitutional role as head of state, including paperwork, his red boxes and private meetings.
Cue a lot of agonising over what this means for the monarchy if the king can’t actually function, who’s going to do whatever it is the royals actually do… are some of the younger ones going to have to pull their weight and actually work for once? The least helpful comment so far has surely been one I’ve seen reported as coming from Chuck’s* former press secretary, according to whom the fact that the king has cancer shows that obviously anyone can get it. WHO WOULD HAVE GUESSED? No wonder you’re his former press secretary if that’s the best you can come up with in this situation…
Anyway, I have no particular feelings on the matter other than as a somewhat remote spectacle. Whatever else happens, Charles will have the best specialists in the world and the best care that money can buy, and he will be supremely looked after. And while this whole business may well show that, hey, the obscenely rich can get cancer just as easily as you Poor People, this is also what separates him from those Poor People. He can afford to get cancer in a way lots of people can’t, cos maybe they don’t have insurance, they can’t afford not to work, they’ve got to worry about where this’ll leave the rest of the family financially, etc. To use my own mum as an example: when her cancer came back in 2012, the treatment she got involved this anti-nausea pill that, for reasons I forget now (possibly her being a pensioner), only cost here five dollars per round of three pills, but normally cost ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY DOLLARS for the same three pills for everyone else. So I obviously don’t celebrate Charles getting cancer, but it’s probably not going to be the disaster for him that it could be for others.
* At this point I initially mistyped “Chuck” as “Cuck”, for what it may be worth. I briefly debated with myself whether or not to correct it.
