After Kate Middleton’s announcement that she had cancer, tourists around the world expressed shock. “I’m just completely shocked, it’s crazy,” Hannah Dickerson, an American tourist, told AFP.
“With King Charles just being diagnosed with cancer and then all the rumors and speculation regarding Kate. Now we know what happened,” she adds.
“I received the notification regarding his diagnosis and I was standing right outside the palace. It’s a shock,” says Amy Watson, a tourist from Australia, a country of which Charles III is head of state.
A video of the palace
Like her, many tourists learned the news around 18:00 GMT via their mobile phones, when the palace published a video of the princess announcing that she had cancer and had started “preventive chemotherapy”.
In this message, in which she appears visibly distressed, Kate assures that she is “fine”.
Many believe that the princess did well to make her illness public, following weeks of speculation which gave free rein to the most conspiracy theories on social networks.
A challenge
For Hannah Dickerson, it’s certainly a “big challenge” for the royal family to know how to communicate regarding Kate’s health.
“I think they understand (…) that people are worried and want to know. It’s difficult but they do it well,” she judges.
According to her, following the criticisms that have been made regarding the lack of transparency of William and Kate, people will see “that there is a human aspect (…) that they are people like others and not just royal figures.
Josh Porter, an Australian tourist, wonders regarding the impact that Kate’s illness might have on the heir to the throne, who had already temporarily withdrawn following the princess’s operation in mid-January, before resume his public commitments.
“It will have big consequences” on the way in which William fulfills his duties as heir, he believes. “I think it’s going to have consequences for his decisions and his mental health…and what he does and how he does it,” he adds.
Especially since his father, King Charles III, aged 75, is also being treated for cancer, the nature of which has not been specified.
“After the recent deaths in the family,” Amy Watson says she “just hopes that they will be okay.”
