Health Issues The Royal Family Tried Keeping Under Wraps
The British Royal family is known for its extreme privacy, but secrets have a way of coming out. From serious diseases to crippling depressions, the royal family tried hard to sweep these medical issues under the rug.
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00:00 The British royal family is known for its extreme privacy, but secrets have a way of
00:05 coming out. From serious diseases to crippling depressions, the royal family tried hard to
00:11 sweep these medical issues under the rug.
00:14 King George III ruled Britain from 1760 until 1820. It was a particularly tumultuous time
00:20 in British history that included the loss of the U.S. colonies after America's victory
00:25 in the Revolutionary War. In addition to that defeat, the monarch's reign was also characterized
00:30 by a variety of physical ailments and mental illness.
00:33 In 1788, the king suffered the first of what would ultimately be four recurrences of a
00:39 mysterious malady that brought about an array of seemingly unrelated symptoms. These included
00:44 unpredictable behavior, abdominal pain, a higher-than-normal metabolic rate, and even
00:49 delirium. Doctors at the time were flummoxed, and the treatments that his physicians recommended
00:55 — which included bloodletting and restraining the king in a straitjacket — certainly didn't
00:59 help.
01:00 While Buckingham Palace officials tried to keep a lid on it, rumors of George's troubling
01:04 and bizarre conduct eventually leaked, leading to his reputation as the so-called "Mad King."
01:10 While the precise nature of King George III's illness will never truly be known, theories
01:14 that have been floated include porphyria and bipolar disorder.
01:18 "And I concluded that yes, he was ill, but he was not insane."
01:22 King George VI was a heavy smoker, which resulted in a number of medical issues in his later
01:27 years. These included a blocked artery in one of his legs and lung cancer, with a malignant
01:32 tumor removed from his left lung in 1951. While the late king's lung cancer is commonly
01:37 acknowledged today, at the time, his doctors kept it a secret — not just from the British
01:42 public but also from the king and his family. According to newspaper reports of the time,
01:47 the king was just fine while recuperating from what was supposedly a successful surgery.
01:52 King George VI died in his sleep just a few months later, in February 1952 at age 56.
01:58 At the time, his death was attributed to a heart attack brought about by coronary thrombosis.
02:04 It's no secret that Princess Margaret, the younger sister of Queen Elizabeth II, didn't
02:08 exactly have the healthiest lifestyle. Not only was she known to be a heavy drinker,
02:13 but she was also a lifelong chain smoker who reportedly inhaled a staggering 60 cigarettes
02:17 a day. During the years leading up to her 2002 death at age 71, she was continually
02:23 dogged by ill health, including hepatitis and several strokes.
02:27 While Margaret's late-in-life health woes were eventually made public, her mental health
02:31 struggles from years earlier were not. Sarah Bradford's 1996 book Elizabeth, a biography
02:37 of Her Majesty the Queen, alleged that Margaret endured a deep depression during the final
02:41 years of her tumultuous marriage to Antony Armstrong Jones. According to the book, the
02:46 respondent, Margaret told a friend that she was going to hurl herself out of her bedroom
02:50 window. The friend was so concerned that she contacted the queen. However, the queen wasn't
02:55 terribly concerned and informed the friend that Margaret's room was on the ground floor.
02:59 In his book Elizabeth and Margaret, The Intimate World of the Windsor Sisters, author Andrew
03:04 Morton alleged that the royals habitually covered up Margaret's issues involving depression.
03:09 He wrote,
03:10 "Let's face it, Princess Margaret was a depressed person, and in the royal family you were not
03:14 allowed to be depressed."
03:16 There was cause for celebration in 2003 when Prince Edward's wife Sophie delivered the
03:21 couple's first child, Lady Louise Windsor. What wasn't known at the time, however, was
03:26 how difficult and life-threatening the birth had been for both mother and newborn. When
03:30 Sophie went into labor prematurely at just 36 weeks, she experienced an acute placental
03:36 abruption, which is when the lining of the placenta separates from the uterus. The result
03:40 was sudden and severe blood loss, with fast-acting doctors rushing to perform an emergency C-section.
03:46 Due to her extreme loss of blood, Sophie reportedly slipped into a semi-conscious state. Reportedly
03:51 just 15 minutes away from death, doctors kept her alive with several blood transfusions.
03:57 Prince Edward immediately returned to London to be by her side, having been away on a royal
04:01 visit to Mauritius. He was reportedly shocked to learn she and their daughter had been so
04:05 near to death, something the British public didn't learn until years later.
04:10 When the world shut down in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Britain's royal
04:14 family was not immune. That month, Prince Charles tested positive for the virus before
04:19 his son William caught it as well. While Charles publicly acknowledged his bout with the virus,
04:24 William did not. He explained why he chose to keep his diagnosis a secret during a subsequent
04:29 public engagement, as reported by The Sun. William reportedly told a patron,
04:33 "There were important things going on and I didn't want to worry anyone."
04:37 Not only was the public not aware that William was ill with the virus, but what also hadn't
04:41 been made public was the severity of his illness. A source claimed to The Sun,
04:45 "William was hit pretty hard by the virus. It really knocked him for six. At one stage
04:50 he was struggling to breathe, so obviously everyone around him was pretty panicked."
04:55 Ultimately, the prince made a full recovery. The following year, he tweeted a photo of
04:59 himself receiving his first COVID-19 vaccination, clearly intended to encourage others to likewise
05:05 get vaccinated.
05:06 "We can wholeheartedly support, you know, having vaccinations. It's really, really important."
05:12 In 2019, Prince Philip was involved in a car accident. Palace officials subsequently announced
05:17 that the prince, at the age of 97, would no longer be driving, and had relinquished his
05:22 driver's license, a rare royal acknowledgement of his advancing age.
05:26 Two years later, in February 2021, Philip was hospitalized. According to a BBC report
05:32 at the time, he had been feeling unwell for a few days.
05:35 A Buckingham Palace spokesperson insisted that he was only admitted to the hospital
05:39 simply as a precautionary measure. He wound up remaining in the hospital for four weeks,
05:44 reportedly being treated for an infection and also undergoing a procedure to address
05:49 a pre-existing condition with his heart.
05:51 Less than a month later, an official statement announced that the Duke of Edinburgh died
05:55 at the age of 99. While there was certainly nothing suspicious about an elderly man dying
06:00 mere weeks before his 100th birthday, it remains a mystery as to whether his hospitalization
06:05 weeks earlier was in any way connected to his death.
06:09 Britain's royal family has included no shortage of scandalous figures over the years. Yet
06:13 it's arguable that none of them ever managed to generate a higher degree of controversy
06:18 than Meghan Markle. After she and husband Prince Harry broke from the royals in 2020
06:23 and moved to California, the couple made headlines with their scorched-earth, highly-rated 2021
06:28 interview with Oprah Winfrey.
06:30 As Markle revealed, the negative press she had been experiencing and the chilly reception
06:34 from the royals had crushed her, to the point that she contemplated suicide. She told Oprah,
06:40 "I just didn't want to be alive anymore."
06:45 Even when she was well into her 90s, Queen Elizabeth II was depicted as being fit and
06:49 healthy for a woman her age. But how much of that common public perception was actually
06:54 true? That was a question raised in October 2021, when Her Majesty's scheduled royal visit
07:00 to Northern Ireland was delayed at the last minute.
07:03 According to a statement from Buckingham Palace, the 95-year-old monarch's doctors had advised
07:07 her to put off the trip and take it easy. Initially, no reason was given, with the implication
07:12 being that she was simply feeling a bit run down or possibly under the weather. However,
07:17 news subsequently emerged that the queen had actually been hospitalized, despite the earlier
07:21 statement claiming she was resting at Windsor Castle.
07:24 "There's actually quite a lot of anger here in the UK at the idea that the palace may
07:28 have intentionally misled the public."
07:30 Whatever caused her hospitalization was apparently not too serious. After staying in the hospital
07:35 overnight to undergo some tests, she returned home the following day. Furthermore, after
07:40 Elizabeth's death in September 2022, an author claimed to have inside information about the
07:46 cause of her passing, which was designated as old age, on her death certificate.
07:50 In his book, Elizabeth, An Intimate Portrait, Giles Brandreth claimed he had it on good
07:55 authority that the queen had been diagnosed with bone cancer, which had been kept top
07:59 secret by Buckingham Palace. An anonymous source seemingly backed up Brandreth's claim,
08:04 telling the Daily Beast,
08:05 "The secret of her failing health was well guarded, but she had actually been very unwell
08:09 for a lot longer than most people knew."
08:12 Whether or not the queen did have bone cancer, however, is a matter of speculation. As Dickie
08:16 Arbiter, the queen's former spokesperson, told Newsweek, Brandreth had been given second-hand
08:21 information that may not necessarily have been true.
08:25 In addition to all of the injuries that King Charles III has experienced over the years
08:29 from polo, including a 2001 fall that left him unconscious, there's another malady he
08:34 apparently deals with. That is evident in the monarch's hands and his swollen puffy
08:38 fingers. Charles is not unaware of his digits' condition. In the BBC documentary Charles
08:44 III, The Coronation Year, the king jokingly compared his hands to that of his son, Prince
08:48 William, quipping,
08:49 "Has anyone got sausage fingers like mine?"
08:51 "No."
08:52 Those self-proclaimed "sausage fingers" are likely the result of an underlying medical
08:56 condition, one that has not been divulged to the public. According to British physician
09:00 Chung Tang, there are several reasons why the king's fingers are so swollen, which is
09:05 officially named dactylitis. Tang told the Daily Mail,
09:08 "This condition arises due to inflammation and can be a result of arthritis, multiple
09:13 bacterial infections, or even TB. All of these underlying causes can be treated, but only
09:19 if it has been determined which is responsible for the enlargement."
09:22 While the public has yet to learn the cause of the king's swelling, there has been speculation
09:26 that a renewed focus on his hands has led Charles to hide them in his pockets whenever
09:30 he's photographed.
09:32 In January 2024, Princess Catherine was admitted to a London hospital for an abdominal surgery.
09:38 At the time, her recovery was estimated to take a while, meaning wouldn't be returning
09:42 to her royal duties until after Easter nearly three months later. Thirteen days after entering
09:47 the hospital, she was discharged.
09:49 As is typically the case with the royals, the precise nature of her surgery was not
09:53 made known. However, People reported that whatever it was, it was not cancer-related.
09:59 While the public was surprised by the abrupt news of her surgery, the same held true for
10:02 Middleton's friends and colleagues. According to People, she had kept all information about
10:07 the impending surgery to herself, with friends reportedly having no knowledge that she was
10:11 planning to go under the knife. In addition, even those working on a close basis with the
10:16 royals were kept in the dark about the surgery.
10:19 Weeks after Princess Catherine returned home after undergoing surgery, Buckingham Palace
10:23 had further health-related news to share. According to their statement, King Charles
10:28 had surgery for an enlarged prostate when doctors identified a form of cancer. Charles
10:32 was reported to be receiving treatment and was following his doctor's advice to postpone
10:37 all public activities.
10:38 He would, however, continue his duties as head of state, including paperwork and his
10:43 regular weekly meetings with British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. If there was a silver
10:47 lining, it was that Charles' health scare reportedly followed his frigid relationship
10:52 with Prince Harry, who had flown to London from California to visit his ailing father.
10:57 When asked about the king's prognosis while interviewed by Good Morning America, Harry
11:00 responded vaguely, to say the least.
11:03 "That stays between me and him."
11:04 -