When information broke of King Charles’ most cancers prognosis yesterday, I used to be instantly transported again many years to a reception he hosted for the media in Washington DC.
For causes misplaced within the dim and distant previous, one reporter requested him how he felt concerning the perils of being a public determine in an more and more harmful world.
I’ve by no means forgotten Charles’ response. He replied that he at all times felt that if a bullet had his identify on it, he was prepared.
And so I do know that he may have taken the information that he has most cancers with attribute fortitude.
But, whereas there isn’t any indication that his prognosis is life-threatening, he wouldn’t be human if the point out of this sickness didn’t conjure up emotions of dread.
Queen Camilla has labored laborious to erase King Charles’ negativity since their wedding ceremony in 2005
After all, monarchs are as susceptible to intimations of mortality as their topics.
But the Charles I do know is a person of deep religion and he’ll draw on that for comfort in what’s clearly a time of trauma even for a person as stoic as he.
It was an perspective that stood him in good stead when his good friend Major Hugh Lindsay – a former equerry to his mom – was killed in an avalanche whereas snowboarding off-piste on the Swiss resort of Klosters in 1988.
Charles, who was snowboarding with Lindsay on the time, later wrote a letter to a different good friend wherein he mirrored on his personal brush with loss of life.
‘We shall miss pricey previous Hugh fairly enormously,’ he mentioned. ‘But the explanation I survived and he did not is among the wonders of our existence’.
Not that I imagine Charles fears loss of life. He would simply be afraid of his life ending earlier than he had completed the issues he was decided to attain earlier than his time got here.
But all of the indications are that the prognosis is sweet. And because the patron of charities akin to Macmillan Cancer Support and Marie Curie, nobody is aware of higher than Charles that massive advances have been made relating to the care and remedy of most cancers. He will, in fact, have entry to the perfect medical workforce obtainable.
The King will even be helped by the truth that, like his mom, he has a capability to compartmentalise issues, to reach at an acceptance of the implications of occasions which he can not alter.
Indeed, the Palace has already mentioned that he stays ‘wholly optimistic’ about his remedy.
In the previous, optimistic pondering shouldn’t be an attribute that many royal watchers would have related to Charles.
For years, as a youthful man, quite than rejoicing in his position as a future king, he appeared to contemplate himself a prisoner of his royal future.
Camilla has been a seminal affect in bringing a few sea change in his pondering on this regard.
In the years since their 2005 marriage, she has labored laborious to erase Charles’ negativity.
The fact is that, regardless of his public picture as a dignified and patrician determine, Charles has at all times been an emotional man.
This aspect of him got here out when the Queen insisted that he divorce Diana within the wake of the infamous Martin Bashir interview.
A letter he wrote to Diana afterwards was stuffed with expressions of remorse, and he made some extent of claiming what a sorry state of affairs it was and the way unhappy he felt.
It was a uncommon perception into the interior workings of a person who, regardless of being one of many world’s most public figures, is a really non-public man.
King Charles has been brave in telling the world that he has most cancers
It should due to this fact have taken a level of braveness for him to confess to the world he’s affected by most cancers inside just a few days of listening to the information himself.
As he commences out-patient remedy, the very last thing the King will need is to be surrounded by folks oozing sympathy for his predicament.
He will need the household to be as matter-of-fact about it as he has been and – little question – as wise as his sister The Princess Royal and his two brothers may have been.
It could also be a harder time for William, and notably Harry, who has not seen his father for 9 months and will probably be coming to the UK to see his ‘Pa’ in individual for the primary time for the reason that Coronation.
The query will need to have crossed Charles’ thoughts that there might probably come a time when he has to make his eldest son, the Prince of Wales, a Regent ought to his personal well being deteriorate.
But for the second he will probably be decided to hold on with the political views and his limitless official paperwork.
I do not assume he’ll for a second enable himself to contemplate the opportunity of doing anything.
Ingrid Seward is Editor in Chief of Majesty journal and her newest e book My Mother And I is printed by Simon & Schuster on February 15.