Royal Health Concerns: Unverified Shadows and Deep Secrets

Kate Middleton, endless conjectures, dark shadows impossible to verify, and revelations from anonymous deep throats (not confirmed, but neither denied nor deniable) continue to thicken around the British royal family: primarily about the course of cancer, of unspecified nature, diagnosed in recent months in rapid succession both to 75-year-old King Charles III and to the Princess of Wales, Catherine, 42 years old, consort of the heir to the throne William. The latest rumors do not bounce for once from the tabloids of the popular press of the island or from the sensationalism in noir shades of the US gossip sites, but come from Italy. From the weekly Gente on newsstands tomorrow, in particular, according to a scoop - anticipated with attractive headlines today - the conditions of the sovereign would be decidedly more alarming compared to the statements or the same official images. While those of Catherine, familiarly Kate for the public opinion of the whole world, remain shrouded in fog: behind a thick blanket of discretion justified by reasons of 'privacy', almost 4 months after the mysterious operation on the abdomen undergone by the princess in a department of the prestigious London Clinic, a private hospital of the London elite. An operation that would have seen a team of Italian doctors sent by the Gemelli Polyclinic of Rome take part in the front line, writes the Italian magazine. Faithful to the iron rule of 'never complain, never explain', inherited from the long reign of Elizabeth II, although with a touch of transparency more since the recent announcement of Charles's illness, Buckingham Palace has obviously not commented in any way on these rumors. Ignored for now also by newspapers and mainstream TV across the Channel, among whose lines, however, in recent times, there have been no lack of questions and cautions about the clinical situation of the reigning monarch and the future queen. Gente anyway goes straight and attributes its information to sources deemed worthy of faith. Regarding Kate's surgical operation, the magazine claims to have learned that it was 'carried out by a team of Italian doctors from the Gemelli Polyclinic of Rome'. Something that neither the Roman hospital nor the London Clinic can certify (or deny) publicly for obvious obligations of patient protection, hiding behind the inevitable 'no comment'. And that has never emerged from the palace statements, as from the British media's buzz, beyond the well-known presence of Italian specialists in many health facilities of the Kingdom or the constant exchange between medical or scientific institutions of the island and the peninsula. As for the conditions of King Charles, Gente claims to have collected confidences of 'sources close' to the Royal Family in contrast with 'the reassurances of the Buckingham Palace statement that last week had announced the return to public engagements' of the sovereign. Then actually realized on Tuesday with a first visit to a hospital and an oncology center in London, symbolically made by Charles in the company of Queen Camilla, during which the monarch showed himself smiling. And in apparently decent shape. An image resulting from therapeutic progress credited by court doctors as 'very encouraging' on the front of treatments that however continue, unlike the secret that continues to dominate on the course of the chemotherapy ongoing for two months for Kate, completely absent from the spotlight since Christmas 2023. But that according to the magazine would hide behind the scenes a reality much more unsettling also for Charles: marked in private by the ordeal of a king 'exhausted by bone pains' that would not give him respite. And even 'very serious', according to the headline that solicits the reading of tomorrow's article. Fears and nightmares that only the coming months, full of commitments to be confirmed from time to time, will be able to clear up or materialize more or less dramatically. Meanwhile, any date on a potential public return of the 42-year-old Princess of Wales, struck by a cancer of unspecified nature, remains unknown. Kate had made it known in a touching video to the nation made public at the end of March 2024, after undergoing a delicate operation on the abdomen. According to the latest information, now dated several weeks, nothing can be officially confirmed. In the coming months, on the occasion of each event in which, in previous years, Middleton's presence was never missing, the princess will consult her court doctors and will decide what to do on the same day. At risk for example her presence at the Wimbledon tennis tournament (scheduled from July 1 to 14), of which she is a patron. And she could be the big absentee not only at Ascot (scheduled in mid-June), which every year sees the entire Royal Family gather in the stands to follow with enthusiasm the horse races, but also at the iconic Buckingham Palace Garden Parties. The risk of coming into close contact with the public is a risk that, given the treatments she is undergoing at this time and the probable lowering of the immune defenses, the princess will not want to run. In doubt also the parade of June 8, the traditional Trooping The Colour, and the usual outing of the Royal Family on the balcony of Buckingham Palace.