AN WILSON: The only way to stop the ugly rumors and speculation is if the royal family opens up about Kate and Charles’ health

These are anxious times for the royal family, and most people of good will wish them well. Some of us may feel that the illnesses and problems plaguing the royal family should remain completely private, and that’s a completely understandable sentiment.

But we live in the age of social media and the Internet, where speculation about every public figure is broadcast on cell phones and laptops all over the planet.

They may hope to control what is said about them. But they can’t stop the rumor mongers, and if they are clumsy in handling information about themselves, they only make the speculation more sensational and cause more damage.

That’s what’s happening now with the Royal Family and those who control their ‘PR’. It’s no exaggeration to say that the internet exploded earlier this week with wild, sometimes disturbing theories about the royals’ health.

Chief among the victims was the poor Princess of Wales, who was recovering at home in Windsor after an abdominal operation at the London Clinic, where she remained for two long weeks.

The immediate cause of the great interest was the relatively trivial news that Prince William had, at indecently short notice, missed the memorial service of his godfather, King Constantine, at St George’s Chapel, Windsor, five minutes down the road from his home.

It certainly seemed trivial until Kensington Palace made a big deal of it by saying his absence was due to a mysterious “personal matter.” Inevitably this confused us all, not least the rumor mongers.

Was Kate sicker than we were told? Was everything okay with their marriage? A whole host of questions came up that never needed to be asked. Not because the public is curious or itchy, but because the Palace has presented them with half-truths.

The whirlwind of suspicions, concerns and conspiracies was so great that the Palace felt obliged to issue a half-hearted health update on Kate, stating that she was ‘still doing well’.

But that didn’t solve the problem either, because we still don’t know what’s going on.

The only way to stop this kind of madness in our ugly social media age, I fear, is for the Palace to provide clarity about the health of the royal family. And I say this as a monarchist who admires both the King and Princess of Wales.

You might wonder: why don’t we all mind our own business and leave the royal family alone? But there are reasons for that that won’t go away.

The first is that all this guesswork and scandal on the Internet is feeding itself and destabilizing the monarchy we hold dear. As gossip and rumors swirl about it, I can rarely remember a time when the institution – no King, no Princess of Wales, and a sudden disappearance of Prince William – has looked so fragile.

The second reason is that the king and his family, whether they like it or not, are public figures, funded by taxpayers’ money. What happens to them is not private in the sense that the rest of us have private lives.

In other countries, such as France or the US, the health of the head of state is a public matter and quite detailed bulletins are issued.

People have the right to information about the health of their head of state. But the royal family may find it difficult to adapt, because things used to be very different.

For example, King George VI, a heavy smoker, was seriously ill in the years after World War II. But how ill he was and how far his cancer had progressed was kept from the public until a lung was removed, in an operation performed at Buckingham Palace itself. Then it became clear that, even though he was still in his fifties, he was living on borrowed time.

A generation earlier, George V’s physician, Lord Dawson of Penn, had performed an act of ‘assisted dying’ on the 70-year-old King in 1936, injecting him with fatal doses of morphine and cocaine. It was clear that the end had come.

It was then announced that ‘the king’s life is coming to a peaceful end’. They delayed the bulletin until it was too late to appear in the Evening Standard, a newspaper considered too low-ranking to publish such a story. The king’s death must first be announced in The Times.

It was easy then to control what the media knew and what they deemed right to publish.

Out of respect for the monarchy, the British press did not even mention the rumor that the new king, Edward VIII, was in love with a married American woman, Wallis Simpson. It was only on the eve of the abdication – when he left the throne to marry her – that any news of this story of vital public interest emerged.

We no longer live in that world, but in a world of information and, worse, an excess of disinformation. A world where the royal family complains about rumors and speculation, but unfortunately encourages it by issuing only partial bulletins on health matters.

If anything, the king has been more honest than William and Kate. We were told about his treatment for an enlarged prostate and then told he was suffering from cancer.

This information, we are led to believe, is part of an unprecedented new openness from the royal family about their health. That may well be the case. But I think we need to know more.

Feeding the public with delicacies would always encourage sordid hypotheses. What was needed was a frank, simple statement: ‘During treatment at the London Clinic, the King was found to be suffering from X cancer. He is being treated. Further bulletins will be issued as soon as His Majesty’s health is known.”

The king has already come a long way to maintain an unwritten contract with the public, who have a right to know about his well-being.

He has made public appearances during treatment and expressed his “lifelong admiration” for cancer charities. There is certainly nothing to stop him from sharing the details of his illness in the next bulletin and thanking us for our continued love and good wishes, which are said to have brought him to tears.

Clearly, we can’t expect that approach from William and Kate, who have been much less transparent, perhaps given that William is not yet king.

Of course, a delicate balance must be struck. Their many admirers and well-wishers do not want to interfere with their personal grief. And they and their children are entitled to our respect.

What William is not entitled to is the kind of private life we ​​take for granted. He is heir apparent and taxpayers have a right to know who their next head of state is.

We all hope that King Charles will recover quickly from his cancer and reign over us for a long time to come. But he is a 75-year-old man with a serious illness.

Rumors are currently swirling about the Prince and Princess of Wales, making us wonder if he and Kate are capable of taking over should this onerous duty be thrust upon them.

Our hearts go out to them, but unfortunately they are not in a position to hide the harsh reality about their health from us – no matter how much they may want to.