Princess Kate returns to her royal duties

Britain’s Catherine, Princess of Wales attended her first major royal occasion since ending chemotherapy, the news agency AFP reported.  

She smiled and clapped alongside her husband Prince William at the Festival of Remembrance commemorative concert at the Royal Albert Hall in London. The royal couple was joined by the head of state King Charles III.

Queen Camilla missed Britain’s annual remembrance weekend events to honor fallen service personnel while she recovers from a chest infection, Buckingham Palace said Saturday.

The wife of King Charles III was due to join the royal family at a “Festival of Remembrance” at London’s Royal Albert Hall on Saturday night. The 77-year-old was also scheduled to honor the war dead at the Remembrance Sunday ceremony at the Cenotaph war memorial, a major event for Britain’s royals, the next day.

“Following doctors’ guidance to ensure a full recovery from a seasonal chest infection, and to protect others from any potential risk, Her Majesty will not attend this weekend’s Remembrance events,” the statement said, adding that she was greatly disappointed.

The king was diagnosed with an undisclosed form of cancer in February but he has gradually returned to public duties after receiving treatment, and recently completed a trip to Australia and Samoa.

Kate underwent her own treatment for an unspecified type of cancer that was detected after abdominal surgery earlier in the year. She said in September that it had been a difficult year but expressed relief that she had completed chemotherapy.

King Charles faced a confrontation from Indigenous senator Lidia Thorpe during his visit to Australia. On October 21, Thorpe told him that he was “not her king” and demanded a treaty between Australia’s First Nations and its government.

After King Charles delivered a significant speech at Australia’s Parliament House, Thorpe confronted him, accusing the Commonwealth of committing “genocide” against Indigenous people.

The Australian senator expressed her strong disapproval by declaring that Charles was not their sovereign and demanded the return of their land, claiming it had been taken from them.

“You are not our King you are not Sovereign… you have committed genocide against our people. Give us our land back. Give us what you stole from us… Our babies, Our people. You destroyed our land,” she said.

“Give us a treaty – we want a treaty with this country… This is not your land, this is not your land, you are not my King you are not our King,” Thorpe added.

As she was escorted out of the hall, she shouted that a treaty between the First Nations people and the government was needed.

Throughout the Royal tour of Australia, Charles and Camilla encountered smaller protests from groups supporting First Nations’ resistance to colonisation. Protesters had been seen displaying banners reading “decolonise” at several events.

The Independent cited sources who indicated that King Charles, despite the confrontation, remained calm.

Earlier that day, Charles and Camilla were warmly received at the national war memorial, where they met hundreds of well-wishers, including a sneezing alpaca, in a lighthearted moment.

What did King Charles say?

In his speech to the Australian parliament, King Charles spoke about his long-standing relationship with the country, which began when he first visited as a teenager. He mentioned how his time studying in the Outback shaped him, leaving a lasting impression on his life.

“Throughout my life, Australia’s First Nations peoples have done me the great honour of sharing, so generously, their stories and cultures. I can only say how much my own experience has been shaped and strengthened by such traditional wisdom,” Charles said.

Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson claims in his soon-to-be released memoir that Queen Elizabeth II was diagnosed with bone cancer before her death in September 2022 at the age of 96. His assertion represents a significant break with royal protocol between the prime minister’s office and Buckingham Palace, under which the U.K.’s elected leaders generally keep the royal family’s private matter to themselves. 

Johnson makes the claim in his upcoming memoir, “Unleashed,” which is scheduled for release later in October. An excerpt from the book, with the purported detail about the late queen’s health, was published this week in Johnson’s regular column for the Daily Mail newspaper.

No senior British government official or member of the royal family has previously disclosed any detail about the late queen’s cause of death. An official death certificate published a week after Queen Elizabeth died listed the cause of death as “old age.” 

“I had known for a year or more that she had a form of bone cancer, and her doctors were worried that at any time she could enter a sharp decline,” Johnson says in his book. “She seemed pale and more stooped, and she had dark ­bruising on her hands and wrists, probably from drips or injections.'”

Although he said the queen seemed to be ailing, Johnson said she was still sharp in his final meeting with her. 

“Her mind… was completely unimpaired,” he writes. “She still flashed that great white smile in its sudden mood-lifting beauty.”

Johnson who served as the U.K. prime minister between 2019 and 2022, met with Elizabeth just days before she died at her Scottish residence, Balmoral Castle, to hand her his formal resignation as the country’s leader. 

Buckingham Palace declined to comment when asked by CBS News about Johnson’s claim. The palace typically does not comment on claims about the private lives of royal family members in books or print.  

While Johnson’s remarks break with the long-time tradition of U.K. prime ministers not commenting publicly on what’s said during private meetings with royal family members, they are not entirely unprecedented. 

In 2014, then-Prime Minister David Cameron apologized to Queen Elizabeth for disclosing details of a private conversation with her about the results of a referendum in which Scots rejected the idea of Scotland’s secession from the United Kingdom to become an independent state. 

Cameron had been overheard telling former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg the monarch appeared relieved that the Scots had voted in favor of remaining in the U.K., suggesting the late queen had “purred down the line” after the final results.

Former British leaders Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have also given some detail of conversations and interactions they had with Queen Elizabeth in books about their time in office. 

Elizabeth’s first son, who became King Charles III upon her death, broke with the long-standing precedent of not revealing personal royal health news earlier this year, when Buckingham Palace revealed that he was being treated for cancer, though the palace has not reveal what type of cancer he’s being treated for.

A month after the revelation about the monarch’s health trouble, his daughter-in-law Catherine, the Princess of Wales, revealed her own cancer diagnosis. Princess Kate said in September that she had completed her treatment, but that her “path to healing” would be long.