To anyone who would doubt Kate’s strength — doubt not.
Following months of speculation, wild conspiracy theories, scurrilous rumors and jokes about her condition, Kate Middleton revealed on Friday that she has cancer.
Will this be enough to shame skeptics, cynics, and Sussex squad members into silence?
Seated on a bench at Windsor, dressed casually in jeans and a nautical striped sweater, the Princess of Wales delivered her most personal address yet.
Should she have had to?
It seems fair to say that had the Palace better handled the mounting mess around her illness from the outset, the answer might well be no.
Kate’s fortitude isn’t just down to revealing her cancer diagnosis and current chemotherapy treatments.
It’s in sitting before the world, alone, in the politest of efforts to shut everyone up.
Kate’s fortitude isn’t just down to revealing her cancer diagnosis and current chemotherapy treatments. It’s in sitting before the world, alone, in the politest of efforts to shut everyone up.
She opened her announcement in a sunlit garden, surrounded by blooming daffodils, smiling and sounding strong.
‘I wanted to take this opportunity to say thank you, personally, for all the wonderful messages of support and for your understanding whilst I have been recovering from surgery,’ she said.
Now that is class. Kate completely ignored the ceaseless social media chatter, some issuing from American celebrities, mocking her and her once-mysterious absence.
Her expression then turned somber and thoughtful.
Tests after her operation in January, she said, ‘found cancer had been present’ and she is now at the beginning of ‘a course of preventative chemotherapy’.
‘This of course came as a huge shock,’ she continued, ‘and William and I have been doing everything we can to process and manage this privately for the sake of our young family.’
Their children are 10, 8 and 5. Kate’s announcement was timed to their Easter holiday school break.
‘Most importantly,’ she said, ‘it has taken us time to explain everything to George, Charlotte and Louis in a way that is appropriate for them, and to reassure them that I am going to be okay.’
But here was Sussex cheerleader Omid Scobie – shortly after journalists had been given warning Friday afternoon that an update on the princess’s health was imminent – posting a now-deleted ‘countdown clock’.
As if this were a game. How childish. How ghoulish and reprehensible.
Scobie’s role as Harry and Meghan’s unofficial biographer serves as a reminder of all that Kate has been put through these last few years: ‘Kate made me cry!’, the release of her private text messages in ‘Spare’, ‘Endgame’ and the claims that she and King Charles, himself battling cancer, were the so-called ‘royal racists’.
All of this, of course, was followed by what I perceive to be multiple PR missteps once Kate was first hospitalized in January.
The most amateurish mistake: The infamous Mother’s Day photo, released on March 10, that was quickly revealed to have been terribly Photoshopped, subsequently killed by news agencies the world over — a mistake for which Kate took the blame.
I didn’t believe it was her fault then and I’ll never believe it now. It seems doubly cruel for her alone to take the fall having so recently been diagnosed with cancer.
Here was Sussex cheerleader Omid Scobie – shortly after journalists had been given warning Friday afternoon that an update on the princess’s health was imminent – posting a now-deleted ‘countdown clock’.
Scobie’s role as Harry and Meghan’s unofficial biographer serves as a reminder of all that Kate has been put through these last few years: ‘Kate made me cry!’, the release of her private text messages in ‘Spare’, ‘Endgame’ and the claims that she and King Charles, himself battling cancer, were the so-called ‘royal racists’.
Prince William, we have now learned, suddenly pulled out of his godfather King Constantine’s memorial service on February 27, just after he and Kate were informed of her cancer diagnosis.
On March 11, Kate’s Photoshop apology was released.
Later that day, the princess finally emerged, in what seemed like damage control, photographed beside William in the back of a Range Rover. Uncharacteristically, she turned her head away from the cameras toward a brick wall.
At the time, I read that act as defiance. Perhaps it was. Or perhaps she was emotional.
Either way, Kate has signaled her strength all along.
Days later, several of her friends spoke publicly. A report in the Daily Beast quoted one friend as saying how unfair it was for Kate to be ‘harassed by the media over f***-ups made by other people’.
‘And is she to blame?’ the friend asked. ‘Sorry, no. That was [the Palace’s] failure and they should have accepted the blame.’
The following weekend: Yet another attempt to quell the rumors, a ‘proof of life’ video of Kate and William walking from a farm shop near Windsor, looking well and happy.
This did not have the intended effect. Instead, this brief clip spurred preposterous theories of a body double, of Kate laid up somewhere, of ‘disappearing’ for reasons other than health.
Kate, unthinkably, became a punchline, a potential scandal, at the very time she most needed protection.
The world didn’t learn that the late Queen Elizabeth had cancer until after she died. We know King Charles has cancer, but his privacy has been utterly respected.
Why not Kate’s?
Just this week came the alarming news that three staffers are under investigation at the London Clinic for attempting to hack into her medical records — while news emerged that Kate was working away on her projects and patronages from home, preparing to ‘soft launch’ her return to public life on Easter Sunday, less than ten days away.
Unlikely for someone who, as Kate told us, has begun her chemotherapy treatments.
Clearly someone needed to wrest control of this narrative to restore some dignity and privacy to the House of Wales. And clearly, that person is Kate.
The world didn’t learn that the late Queen Elizabeth had cancer until after she died. We know King Charles has cancer, but his privacy has been utterly respected. Why not Kate’s?
Just this week came the alarming news that three staffers are under investigation at the London Clinic for attempting to hack into her medical records – while news emerged that Kate was working away on her projects and patronages from home, preparing to ‘soft launch’ her return to public life on Easter Sunday, less than ten days away.
Telling, I think, that she chose to sit on her own to deliver this news. It is a show of great personal strength and character.
Charles, in a statement immediately following Kate’s announcement, said that he is ‘so proud of Catherine for her courage in speaking as she did.’
Indeed: it’s her right to settle this public relations nightmare as she sees fit.
So, if she had to announce her diagnosis sooner than she planned or wanted — and it seems that could be the case, given that a source close to her said on Monday that she would speak out ‘when she goes back to work after Easter’ — Kate has, it seems, done it on her own terms, with great composure and dignity.
What an elegant rebuke to all those who thought the worst — not necessarily that Kate has been sick, but that she has been weak.
How wrong they were.