If royal commentators are to be believed, Charles III has so far managed a perfect record. It wasn't a foregone conclusion: When he became king in September 2022 after the death of his mother, Elizabeth II, many pointed to the difficulty of the task ahead. The Queen had just celebrated an exceptional jubilee – 70 years of reign – and she was immensely popular. Her eldest son, who had remained in the shadow of her power for half a century, was a more controversial figure, respected for his long-standing commitment to the environment but criticized for his interventionism and turbulent private life.

The monarch's actions have been in keeping with tradition. He has maintained the Tuesday audiences with the prime minister, the pre-recorded Christmas message, the magnificence of the coronation and the many public engagements dear to his mother, who was committed to them almost to the end.

There is, however, one area in which this already elderly king – aged 75 – has broken new ground, and that is royal communication. He has modernized it, even if the exercise in transparency remains limited. The most recent example was the revelation of his cancer on February 6. The King has "a form of cancer," Buckingham Palace announced, without specifying what it was, but implying that it was not prostate cancer, even though the treatment he had just undergone, during which his diagnosis was made, was aimed at correcting an enlarged prostate.

During the last year of his mother's reign, who died at 96, little came out about her health, apart from news about her mobility problems that Buckingham Palace sometimes put forward to cancel her public appearances at the last minute. When the Queen was hospitalized at the end of 2021, Buckingham Palace said "Her spirits are good." Her death was attributed to old age, as was that of her husband, Prince Philip, in April 2021. Her father King George VI's lung cancer was not revealed until his death in February 1952. In September 1951, the monarch had undergone total removal of his left lung, but the surgeons cited "structural abnormalities" in the lung.

In the Windsor family, the famous adage "Never complain, never explain" has long been the order of the day but the stigma of cancer has recently been lifted in the UK. British celebrities and citizens have begun sharing their diagnoses on social media, giving a voice to the nearly 400,000 people diagnosed in the country each year.

Some of the posts went viral, like that of Deborah James, who died of bowel cancer at the age of 40, in 2022, after sharing her journey with her illness. King Charles III is part of this new way of talking about the disease, designed to limit discrimination or indifference and raise funds for research.

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