Editorial: King Charles offers encouragement to fellow cancer sufferers

​When Queen Elizabeth II died in 2022, there was an understandable sense of uncertainty about the monarchy’s future.

​The then queen had been on the throne for 70 years, longer than any other ruler since William the Conqueror seized the crown in 1066.

Her Majesty set an almost impossibly high bar for any monarch who would follow, given her decades of service to Britain, rarely so much as saying a wrong word.

The then Prince of Wales, on the other hand, had intermittently become embroiled in controversy over his tendency to express views on contentious matters of policy, which appeared to stray into politics – something his mother was careful not to do.

In fact, Charles III has in his three years as king been a much-admired head of state. He has ditched entirely any tendency towards partial politics. The king had been the heir for the entirety of his mother’s reign, and was 74 when he was crowned – therefore a supremely experienced royal.

It is almost two years since the king revealed that he was being treated for cancer, weeks before his daughter-in-law, Catherine, Princess of Wales, revealed the same. Typically of both, there was no self-pity then, no dwelling on the details and there has been no self-pity since. On the contrary, they have continued with public duties when they can.

On Friday the nation was relieved to hear the king say that his cancer treatment will be reduced next year. He did so while appealing for earlier diagnosis of that disease (an appeal in which he wisely sidestepped the debate about prostate cancer, given the pros and potentially serious cons of early investigation for that particular type).

King Charles and the Princess of Wales are continuing a royal tradition of soldiering on with public life and not complaining, while inspiring people – in this case, the millions of Britons with cancer.