Queen Camilla Faces an Uphill Battle Getting King Charles to Indulge in Some R&R Following Procedure and Is Being “Very Strict” with Him

Both the Princess of Wales and King Charles were respectively discharged from The London Clinic yesterday, Kate after nearly two weeks following abdominal surgery on January 16, and Charles after three days following a corrective procedure for an enlarged prostate on January 26. Kate will be out of commission—at least as far as public duties are concerned—until at least April; Charles is expected to be sidelined for at least a month. Both, however, are keen to continue working, and will take some calls and meetings from bed as they recover.

Charles is 75, and though his condition was benign and he is expected to make a full recovery, it seems to have caused at least his wife, Queen Camilla, to reevaluate his workaholic tendencies. Charles often works seven days a week—sometimes until 4 a.m.—and is so deep in meetings and paperwork and royal engagements that he rarely if ever takes a lunch. As he recovers following his procedure, OK reports that Camilla is “being very strict” with her husband, forcing him to rest—which is not something Charles is prone to do. 

“I think more people will have sympathy with the royals because they may be blue blood, but they’re the same as the rest of us,” royal correspondent Charles Rae said on GB News. “They suffer from the same problems. The thing is, you’ve got to remember that the King is a workaholic, and he will want to get back to work very quickly to do all sorts of things.”

While the King heals, his siblings Princess Anne and Prince Edward will attend various engagements in his place, but the recovery period will be challenging for Charles, Rae said. “It’s going to be a big job for the Queen to tell him to slow down and take it easy, because he’s facing three to four weeks of recuperation before he can get back on his feet,” Rae said. “Camilla once joked that the only way that she could get him to stop working was by holding a big placard up in front of his desk that said, ‘Stop working.’ Because he does get down to it, and there’s a tremendous amount of time and work behind the scenes.”

Of that behind-the-scenes work, Rae continued “We only see him when he’s on official duties. But behind the scenes, he’s got all sorts of paperwork. He’s writing letters. He’s got various meetings, various people coming to see him, and sometimes he’s well into late at night before he’s finished.”

Charles is actually doing important work through revealing his diagnosis, as “It has certainly helped the charities involved with prostate cancer, because several men have got up off, literally got up off their bottoms and found out a bit more about it and contacted their doctors as well,” Rae said of getting the word out about the King’s surgery.

Camilla was a frequent presence at The London Clinic during Charles’ brief stay in hospital, even visiting three different times inside of a 24-hour period. “Normally we don’t see royals turn up at a hospital when one of them’s in there, apart from occasionally the Queen visited Prince Philip in one of his longest stays in hospital,” Rae said. “It’s nice to see that they are behaving as they always are, like normal people. And I think this shows the way the royal family is now.”  

Rae concluded “I suppose the other thing this all reminds us is that they’re vulnerable to the same things we are, too.”

In addition to his wife, The Daily Express reports that the King’s staff, too, worry that he’s doing too much. A source speaking to The Telegraph said “The people who work for him are worried he is doing too much for a man of 75. It’s sometimes a struggle to keep up with him.”

Charles is reportedly at his London home, Clarence House, hopefully resting. We’ll see how long that lasts, though—a source said of Camilla that she knows Charles’ work gives him an incredible sense of fulfillment, and that she was “never going to change the habits of a lifetime,” they said.