At 6 p.m. local time on Friday in the U.K., the official social media accounts for the Prince and Princess of Wales released a video featuring Kate Middleton sitting on a bench in a garden, alone, speaking directly to the camera. She reveals that as a result of the abdominal surgery she received in January, doctors discovered that she has cancer. She has been receiving what she describes as “preventative chemotherapy” in the time since then.
Something like this was always coming down the pipeline. Whatever the reason for Kate Middleton’s disappearance for public life eventually turned out to be, it was never going to be something fun. And now we know the precise shape of that darker reality. This video was followed by commentary from journalists and online mouthpieces that anybody who speculated about her whereabouts ought to be ashamed of themselves. Helen Lewis wrote a piece for the Atlantic headlined “But it’s not guilt the public ought to be feeling. It’s a more wide-ranging kind of disgust about monarchy in general.
I don’t blame Kate Middleton for any of this. She knew what she was signing up for in joining the royal family, sure, but I think it’s right and human to feel sorry for a mother of young children who has received a cancer diagnosis. That said, turning the blame on the public at large is disingenuous. Yes,. People undoubtedly look it too far, with the TikTok sleuthing, the prurience with which many engaged in conspiracy theories about where she had gone. The jokes look in very poor taste now.