When the late queen stood up to give a speech marking 40 years on the throne, in November 1992, she conceded to the assembled dignitaries, and the watching nation, that her family had had an “annus horribilis”.
The phrase came to be remembered as an acknowledgment that even the staunchly dutiful monarch, who rarely betrayed emotion, had felt the cumulative effects of a series of blows.
Yet the past 12 months have surely been marked out as ranking among the most traumatic for the royal family in living memory.
In 1992, the revelations included the release of salacious details about the troubled private lives of Diana and Charles, the Prince and Princess of Wales; the separation of the queen’s son Prince Andrew, and the divorce of the queen’s daughter, Princess Anne; and the fire that had raged through Windsor Castle.
The queen’s unusually frank admission was followed by a yet more tumultuous period: five years later, Diana died in a car crash, casting a deep shadow over the lives of Prince William and his brother, Prince Harry.
Recent months have brought a furore about the manipulation of a picture of Catherine with her children, which set social media aflame with outlandish conspiracy theories after weeks of speculation about the much-loved princess’s health.
Catherine’s admission to hospital was announced in January, on the same day as King Charles III’s own diagnosis with an unspecified cancer.
The lack of detail about either’s condition, and the royal family’s silence during the ensuing weeks and then months, fed a sense that the public had not been told the whole story.
Friday’s statement addresses the legitimate concerns about transparency head on, explaining that her condition was initially believed not to be cancerous, and that she and Prince William wanted time to explain the news to their children.
Catherine’s diagnosis, and the king’s, came less than a year after the lavish ceremony at Westminster Abbey in which Charles III was anointed, at the age of 74, by the archbishop of Canterbury, and which the family may have hoped would usher in a new era of stability.
A few months earlier, Charles had led mourners at his mother’s funeral, after hundreds of thousands of members of the public queued through the night and around the block to pay homage to her coffin, amid an outpouring of grief.
Family tensions and troubles were evident even at the time of the funeral. Prince Andrew did not wear military uniform as he walked behind his mother’s coffin, after having been stripped of his royal duties in the wake of claims of sexual abuse made in a US court case, which the prince has always denied.
Harry returned for the funeral of his beloved grandmother; but his presence only served to underline his semi-detached status.
Just a few months later, in January, he had published a brutally revealing memoir, Spare, which included allegations that he and his brother had once come to blows, as well as less-than-edifying details about losing his virginity.
Harry has also continued to fight a series of very public court cases against the British press, which serve to remind the public of his fraught status. He has also been battling the government in court – unsuccessfully – over whether the taxpayer should foot the bill for his personal security when he visits the UK.
King Charles’s brother, Prince Andrew, continues to be an ongoing source of humiliation, with a forthcoming Netflix drama set to rehash the devastating Emily Maitlis interview in which he was questioned about his friendship with the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
And Charles had barely had time to establish himself as reigning monarch, the post he had waited his life to occupy, before his own diagnosis forced him to reduce his public duties.
For William and Catherine, however, all these tribulations, which have chipped away at the monarchy’s air of unflappable majesty, are likely to pale into insignificance alongside the daunting family drama they now face, in the glare of the public eye.
• This article was amended on 24 and 25 March 2024. The late queen’s “annus horribilis” speech was in November 1992, not June 1992 as an earlier version said, and Prince Harry’s memoir Spare was published after his grandmother’s funeral, not before.
