This week, Queen Camilla pulled out of the welcome ceremony for the Qatari state visit, but she ended up attending the palace luncheon and the state dinner on Tuesday. On that same day, she told people that her “chest infection” was actually pneumonia, and that’s why she had been canceling so many appearances and events in the past month. The royal reporters are taking pains to talk around it, but I strongly suspect that Camilla’s pneumonia started out as Covid. Which would make this like the third or fourth time she’s had Covid. In any case, “sources close to Camilla” are mad as hell that Cam is sick and that everyone expects her to do royal work now that she’s fulfilled her lifelong goal of being queen. She left bodies in the street in her quest to be queen, but now she just wants to be left alone.

Friends of Queen Camilla have told The Daily Beast that they are “extremely concerned” by the 77-year-old contracting pneumonia. Palace aides had attempted to play down the severity of her illness in recent weeks, saying that she was suffering from a “nasty bug” and a “lingering chest infection” but Camilla herself revealed Tuesday, during a state visit to the U.K. by the Emir of Qatar, that she had in fact contracted pneumonia.

Camilla’s revelation raised new question marks about the only partially transparent way in which the palace typically handles health news about its two most elderly principals. King Charles is being treated for cancer but the palace has declined to specify the type. The palace has form in this area; when the late Queen Elizabeth II was dying of bone cancer her aides consistently briefed she was suffering from nothing more than “episodic mobility problems.”

Three separate friends expressed their concerns about Camilla to The Daily Beast. While all made it clear they understood Camilla was indeed recovering well and not in danger, they variously said they believed she was finding the demands of being queen “exhausting” and that a “brutal” year spent worrying about her husband’s health had left her “run down and vulnerable.”

One friend said: “People forget that Camilla never set out to be queen. She never signed up for the hamster wheel. She just happened to fall in love with a prince. She has risen to the demands of the job but she finds it exhausting.”

She is suspected to have contracted the disease during the recent state visit to Australia and Samoa or shortly thereafter. The friend said: “At 77, to be shipped off to the other side of the world to shake hands with thousands of people when your husband has cancer is, quite frankly, too much to ask. Camilla would never complain, and of course she wanted to support her husband, but she never should have been put in that situation. And she got pneumonia as a result. I hope this makes the mandarins sit up and take notice.”

Another friend of the couple told The Daily Beast, “We are all extremely concerned that this happened. Thank goodness she seems to have recovered. Camilla just needs to rest and recuperate now over Christmas and I only hope they drive her and the king to church on Christmas Day if it’s cold!”

A third friend of the queen’s told The Daily Beast: “Prince William said that his year had been ‘brutal’ and the ‘hardest’ of his life. I would humbly suggest that Camilla has had a brutal year too. To get pneumonia at her age is no small thing. She was run down and vulnerable and she needs to be cared for as well.”

[From The Daily Beast]

“People forget that Camilla never set out to be queen. She never signed up for the hamster wheel. She just happened to fall in love with a prince.” Camilla’s “friends” really shouldn’t go down this road. Camilla went out of her way to attach herself to the married heir to the throne, she went out of her way to destroy his marriage and gaslight his wife, and after Diana’s death, Camilla demanded to marry Charles and to have an official image makeover. She also demanded the title of queen – QEII never wanted this horse to be called “Queen Camilla” and they waited until QEII was close to death to force her into signing off on “queen consort Camilla.” Now that Camilla has gotten everything she ever wanted after decades of appalling behavior, Camilla has regrets! No, what this really is Camilla telling Charles that she’s not going to travel anymore. This has been the perfect excuse for her – no more international travel, she’s just going to stay in the UK from here. Preferably Ray Mill.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.