Have you noticed that King Charles and Queen Camilla have barely been together in recent months? He’s been going solo at most of his public events, including his trip to Southport this week. You would have thought that Camilla would want to join him to meet with the families of those murdered children. But Camilla did not join him. She stayed in Scotland, I guess? I’m not sure she was with him at Castle Mey in recent weeks either. I bring this up because the Daily Beast has yet another piece about how Camilla worries that Charles is doing too much. This reads like Camilla soft-launching the idea that she has no interest in traveling to Australia and Samoa this fall and she wants Charles to cancel too.

Charles was in Southport and London this week: First Charles went to Southport, then the king then travelled to London the next day, Wednesday, for a private meeting with the bereaved families of the three children. No details have been released of the meeting save that it occurred at the king’s London home, Clarence House. He is thought to have then received cancer treatment in London and helicoptered back to Balmoral on Thursday.

Courtiers want Charles to do less: While the overall mood at Buckingham Palace is highly supportive of the course of action which is being driven by “the Boss,” dissenting voices and those urging the king to be more careful so as not to impede his recovery are notable.

Camilla wants Charles to slow down: A friend of Camilla’s told the Daily Beast: “Camilla would have been deeply unhappy that having only begun his holiday on Monday, he broke it off on Tuesday to do an incredibly intense engagement. Of course, she understands it was very important and there is no way she would try to tell Charles what to do, but it seems to be extraordinary timing. She wants him to slow down, she is afraid he is working too hard, and that’s before you even get to the Australia tour.”

Charles is frail: Another source said: “I think there has been a lot of positive spin about the king doing well, getting back to work and so on. But, you know, he has cancer. He is not well. He looked frail in Southport on Tuesday in my opinion. You only have to look at photographs from now compared to a year ago and it’s obvious; he has lost a lot of weight and aged considerably. Camilla has been telling him to take a break but he is a workaholic, he won’t listen.”

Charles did what he had to do though: A friend of the king’s however defended the monarch’s decision to head south for the engagements this week, saying, “There is not really much point being king if you’re not going to act like a king. I think the reference point here was the Grenfell fire [when a London housing block caught fire with many deaths]. Queen Elizabeth’s visit was an important gesture to the community. Charles is and always has been a workaholic. This is his destiny. If he put his feet up at Balmoral and sat around feeling sorry for himself his morale would crumble and that’s what really matters. Whatever time remains to him will be spent doing the job to the best of his ability.”

[From The Daily Beast]

There was also a cautious reference to the fact that some critics believed Charles was too slow to show his face in Southport and meet with the families. I agree – he was too slow, and the optics were terrible, as Charles enjoyed the Highland Games while white nationalists attacked people of color. It was terrible that it took Charles three weeks to meet with the Southport families too. I get that he’s very sick and Camilla is concerned, but guess what? Camilla should have gone to Southport too. Anyway, there’s a reason why there are all of these stories about A) Camilla wanting Charles to slow down and B) William gleefully awaiting Charles’s funeral. It’s all connected.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.