Winston Churchill said that the vanished Soviet Union was a riddle wrapped in a mystery within an enigma, and the same can be said for a couple of months now about the British royal family. Like matryoshka dolls, Russian hollow dolls that pop out of each other, a similar thing happens with the Windsors, only instead of figurines what appear are questions, secrets and surprises. Many, perhaps too many.
Under enormous pressure to clarify the reason for his long absence, P alau yesterday published a video of Caterina (recorded on Wednesday by the BBC) in which she explains, looking good and reading a text, that she suffers from cancer (she does not say which type) and is undergoing “preventive chemotherapy”.
Behind the logical wave of sympathy generated by the announcement of the illness – and especially since it is a princess that the British press treats with loose cotton -, numerous and delicate questions arise. The main one is why, expressly or tacitly, Kensington Palace has maintained during all this time (nine weeks) that Catherine’s problem was not cancerous, when in the end it was.
Trying to square the circle, the wife of the heir to the throne presented in the video a timeline in which surgery is scheduled for a serious intestinal problem that is not suspected to have anything to do with cancer, she undergoes an operation in the London Clinic on January 17, and later tests suggest that there is, unexpectedly, a cancerous problem.
Undoubtedly, more is known today than yesterday about what happened to Caterina, and part of the enigma has been revealed, but the questions remain numerous: what was the original intervention about? Why was it said, before it was known that it was cancer, that she would be away from public life at least until after Easter? Why, every time he was asked about his state of health, Palau referred to the original statement that stated that his problem was not of the cancerous type? Have there been lies or has the truth been in any way missed by pretending to be something that was not?
The parallel between the case of King Charles III, who went to the hospital for a benign prostate problem and ended up with an unspecified cancer, and that of Catherine, who went to the same clinic for to an abdominal operation and also came out with a cancer of which nothing is explained and which has been hidden all this time from the subjects, in the middle of the controversy about the famous fake photo and the absence at the last moment of Guillem at a Mass at Windsor by King Constantine of Greece.
The Princess of Wales explains in the video – perhaps too late – the trauma that the diagnosis has meant for her and her family, the time she has needed to accept the news and explain it to her children, Jordi, Carlota and Lluís, to “concentrate on the things that really matter” and take the first steps in the search for physical and mental well-being. At the same time, he thanks all the signs of affection received, asks for time, space and understanding not to give more details, and shows his solidarity with all those who suffer from the disease. “You are not alone, do not lose faith and hope”.
Caterina, in an attempt to get closer to people after so much opacity, pointed out that the last two months have been very hard, but it is as if she turned the page after taking on the problem and changed the shock for a positive spirit of recovery (“I feel well and stronger every day, I look forward to the moment to return to a job I like”). P alau indicated, for his part, that he “trusts in his full recovery”.
King Charles III yesterday applauded the “courage” of his young woman, whose return to public functions has been further delayed after the publication of the video. Now he is no longer expected to appear in public at Easter Sunday mass, nor is he expected to return to activity immediately after Holy Week. After delaying the announcement that he had cancer until it was unsustainable, now the plan B of the princes of Wales is not to have pressure to return to the foreground, and put an end to the rumors of an affair of William and a crisis matrimonial
That’s why they have – and will surely have – the sympathy of their subjects. But questions, riddles, mysteries and riddles continue to emerge from the Windsor dolls, like Russian matryoshka dolls.
