Surrounded by love HOW CHARLES IS FIGHTING HIS CANCER

God save the King! A shell-shocked royal family is united in getting the Monarch

- Judy Kean

He waited 73 long years to be able to do the job into which he was born. And since he became the Monarch in September 2022, the King has thrown himself into his role, working tirelessly, despite being well past the age of retirement. He was happy to be finally fulfilling his destiny, say friends, so to be handed a shocking cancer diagnosis just over a year into his new life seems cruel and unfair.

But cancer is a cruel and unfair disease, no matter who it strikes, and His Majesty has shown that he’s going to face the challenge of dealing with it head on, while carrying on with his job as best he can.

“One can’t help but feel great sympathy for King Charles, who has been in a job he has waited his entire life for, for just one year and four months, and this news will have come as a shock,” says royal historian Tessa Dunlop.

Royal correspondents and those who know the King personally agree that Charles, 75, was getting into his stride as sovereign, so to be incapacitated by illness will be a huge blow.

“His destiny had arrived, and he was embracing it,” one unnamed friend told British media.

Royal biographer Robert Hardman says he was clearly “a contented sovereign”, getting on with the “timehonoured duties of head of state” to the point where people had started to take him for granted because he’d stepped into the role with relative ease.

His reign had started “exceptionally well,” points out Ingrid Seward, editor-inchief of Majesty magazine, and he was seeking to stamp his own mark on a job that had been associated with his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, for so long.