The Princess of Wales’s diagnosis makes me fear for the health of the monarchy

With the King and his daughter-in-law being treated for cancer, there’s a real risk that more royals will take a leaf out of Prince Harry’s book and opt out of frontline duties, writes Alan Rusbridger. So what is the plan to keep The Firm going?

The King and the Princess of Wales are stepping back from public engagements to undergo treatment (PA Wire)

Forget the conspiracy theories that have been raging around the world. In one short, dignified video, the Princess of Wales revealed just why she has taken time out from the public gaze. She spoke movingly and with decorum. Here ends the gossip.

It’s barely six weeks since we learned that the King, too, has cancer. Both are receiving treatment. Both speak with a degree of courage and optimism about their hopes for a full recovery. We all hope and pray that they make one. But Kate’s announcement heightens the increasing sense of fragility about the institution of which she has become such an iconic member. Take two key members of the family out of action (four, if you include reduced participation from their partners, who are looking after them) and the whole operation begins to teeter a bit.

I’ve been quietly wondering about this for some time, but – even before Kate’s announcement – was jolted by the Daily Mail surrendering half of its front page recently to a doom-laden warning: “If the royal family is not quite at the 11th hour, it is perilously close.”

This was a long read by the paper’s veteran royal-watcher Richard Kay, who is neither a noted republican nor – as are so many royal-watchers – an embroiderer of thinly sourced fantasies.

Kay wrote of a “worrying dysfunction” in aspects of the royal family’s behaviour recently. He drew attention to the vast property and land empire known as the Duchy of Cornwall, which generated profits of £24m last year, observing: “Courtiers have asked what the Prince of Wales spends the money on – or even if he has the faintest idea what to do with it.”

Kay questioned whether William has the capacity or willingness to put in the kind of shifts his grandmother did. The prince, said Kay, is contributing to a sense of aimlessness about where, if anywhere, the monarchy is going.

Well. The age profile and health of The Firm are not encouraging. Charles is nearly 75, and, like his daughter-in-law, is being treated for cancer. Camilla is 76. Anne, at 73, could have been drawing her pension seven years ago. The Duke of Kent is 88; the Duke of Gloucester is 79. Of the mainstream royals, only Prince Edward, at 60, and his wife, at 59, are not yet eligible for a bus pass in England. Harry and Meghan have retired, hurt. And Prince Andrew has been metaphorically photoshopped out of every picture, now and for ever.

Unless I’m missing someone, that’s about it. Cast forward 10 years and you’d expect Kent and Gloucester to be more or less out of the picture. Anne might still be battling on. The Office for National Statistics predicts that the King can expect to live to 87: if so, he might well, in 10 years’ time, be spending more time with his herbaceous borders. We can’t expect much of the assorted Beatrices, Eugenies, lesser Wessexes or Tindalls. Shakespeare would have had them as walk-on parts.

So by then – actuarially – it might just be Will and Kate, with a bit of Anne and a bit of Wessex infill. And lots of houses, palaces, estates and money – lots of money – with Andrew, by then 74, still sulking (mostly invisibly) in the background.

Attention will naturally turn to the next generation. George will be 20, perhaps in his second year at university and weighing up his options. Charlotte will be in her post-A-level year, with Louis sitting his GCSEs.

I wonder if Charlotte and Louis will, at some point in their teens, manage to get hold of Uncle Harry’s book, Spare, with its, um, unsparing account of the life that could await them. A world of odious whispering, conniving courtiers bowing to your face while stabbing you in the back. Lives dominated by the media’s unceasing, obsessive gaze – at the mercy of “dweebs and crones and cut-rate criminals and clinically diagnosable sadists” (that’s just the British press). Your dad (in Harry’s words) “not merely my father ... my boss, my banker, my comptroller, keeper of the purse strings throughout my adult life”.

Might they, like Harry, feel “forced into this surreal state, this unending Truman Show in which I almost never carried money, never owned a car, never carried a house key, never once ordered anything online, never received a single box from Amazon, almost never travelled on the Underground. (Once, at Eton, on a theatre trip)”?

“Sponge, the papers called me. But there’s a big difference between being a sponge and being prohibited from learning independence. After decades of being rigorously and systematically infantilised, I was now abruptly abandoned, and mocked for being immature? For not standing on my own two feet?”

It’s not the most enticing job description, is it? If those were your firm’s testimonials on the Glassdoor recruitment website, there wouldn’t be a stampede of applicants.

Is it possible that some of the would-be future lesser royals will opt out? If they do, who could blame them? Who then will open all those buildings, dish out the MBEs, inspect the troops, grace the fundraising dinners, tour the Commonwealth, lunch with lord lieutenants, make small talk with the Privy Council, and generally keep the flummery on the road?

Last Wednesday, the King’s appointments included receiving the royal apothecary – the holder of an office dating back to 1660 – and investing him with the Royal Victorian Order as he retired aged a mere 67. The week before that, the King was busy using a bodkin (a needle to you and me) to prick parchment sheets – which is, apparently, an arcane procedure for choosing high sheriffs. Medieval flimflam, but time-consuming.

If the palace called in auditors, they might start to flag up whether, in a few years’ time, the monarchy could possibly survive as a going concern. There’s no shortage of cash – far from it – but is the institution stable enough in other ways to meet its obligations and continue its business for the foreseeable future? Which is the question auditors are supposed to ask.

Is there a risk register locked away in one of Buckingham Palace’s 775-odd rooms? You’d assume it deals with fire, floods, falling masonry, parchment shortages, and the reputational perils of errant never-to-be-mentioned uncles. They will now have upped the column dealing with serious illness afflicting key members of the family. But does it ever look at the existential risk – that, within a decade, there will simply not be enough suitably bred employees to keep the show on the road?

Is there a plan for the assorted London palaces? For Windsor Castle, Sandringham, Balmoral, Highgrove, Birkhall, Dumfries House, and the estates in Romania? If there aren’t enough first-rank royals to go round, what then?

And what’s the plan for the UK, assuming such an entity still exists in 2034? Who’s in charge of drawing up plans for what happens if the monarchy runs out of puff? I hope someone, somewhere is thinking about such things, because I think Richard Kay could be right: when you get to the 11th hour, time is short.