King Charles and his Buckingham Palace team are currently projecting calm and steadiness, in my opinion. As the months roll by, it would have been nice for the palace to disclose more about Charles’s cancer, treatment and estimated timeline for recovery. That being said, the palace is doing regular schedule updates and they haven’t been caught out in any big lies, unlike Kensington Palace’s team. That hasn’t stopped the speculation about Charles’s health and whether or not his condition is a lot worse than the palace is letting on. My theory is that people actually feel more comfortable speculating about Charles’s health than the Princess of Wales’s situation, and that there’s a significant amount of projection/obfuscation happening. But I digress. Tom Sykes at the Daily Beast wrote a lengthy piece about how Charles’s funeral plans are still being updated and how there’s a lot of chatter that the palace is lying about Charles’s actual condition these days.
It’s the question everyone in British society and in the corridors of power is thinking, but nobody will publicly ask, let alone answer: Just how sick is King Charles III? The chatter that King Charles is significantly more unwell than his aides are letting on is proliferating in British society. Speaking to friends of the king in recent weeks about his health, the most common response is a lowering of the voice by half an octave or so, followed by the sombre, drawn-out pronouncement: “It’s not good.”
The Daily Beast has been told, for example, that not only are Charles’ funeral plans being regularly updated but that a document reviewing what went well after the queen’s funeral, and what could be done better next time a monarch dies—a kind of “lessons learned” crossed with a scorecard, the most esoteric of business reviews—is circulating in Whitehall. The government department responsible for state funerals, the Cabinet Office, declined to comment on claims that the Operation Menai Bridge (as Charles’ funeral plan is codenamed) document is being regularly updated, but again emphasized that making no comment on such plans was routine.
Friends of the family and insiders are genuinely distraught at the prospect that the U.K. could lose its king far sooner than any had imagined, but they are trying to stay positive. One old friend of the family, for example, told The Daily Beast, “Of course he is determined to beat it and they are throwing everything at it. Everyone is staying optimistic, but he is really very unwell. More than they are letting on.”
Compounding the sense of gloom, multiple sources have told The Daily Beast that officials are now regularly reviewing copies of the several-hundred-page “Menai Bridge” document. All royal family members have bridge-based codewords to be used at their death—Queen Elizabeth’s death plan was famously “Operation London Bridge.” Menai Bridge is a dramatic suspension bridge that connects the island of Anglesey with the Welsh mainland.
While the sources all emphasized that the notes are routinely reviewed by the palace and the military, one source, a former staffer who retains active links with serving courtiers, said: “The plans have been dusted off and are actively being kept up to date. It’s no more than what you would expect given the king has been diagnosed with cancer. But the circulation of them has certainly focused minds.”
Another source, who knows a senior official involved in the planning of royal funerals, said: “Of course they are looking at every aspect of Menai Bridge. The queen’s funeral went like clockwork and set a high bar. It’s not an emotional thing, it’s a job, one taken very seriously, and understandably no-one plans to get caught out.”
Overall, however, the British press have observed what seems like a remarkable silence on the matter of Charles’ health and funeral planning. This is not, as one journalist told The Daily Beast, just out of respect for or collusion with the palace, but rather due to very strict rules and laws in the U.K. governing medical privacy and the publishing of personal information. “Even if you had it copper-bottomed that he had bladder cancer, you couldn’t run it,” the journalist said.
Don’t mind me, I’m just sitting here in awe of how Sykes wrote that last part of the excerpt. That’s exactly what a British journalist would do if they had good sourcing that Charles has bladder cancer – they wouldn’t be allowed to print it in a British outlet, but they could introduce it as a barely-hidden hypothetical to an American publication like the Daily Beast. This is as close as we’re going to get (for the time being) for a confirmation about Charles’s diagnosis. As for the rest of the story… Sykes does have sources in BP and KP, and if his sources are concerned, that IS something notable. It’s hard to reconcile these “gloomy” quotes with what the palace is actually projecting and briefing, that Charles will be up and around in June and that his treatment is going well.
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