‘Charlie’s angels’: Three women the King can count on in a crisis

If you want something doing, ask a busy woman. Or three, if you’re a busy monarch who has had to unexpectedly withdraw from public life for the foreseeable.

Following King Charles’s announcement yesterday that he is battling cancer, his family has rallied around in a warming show of support. But with the pool of working royals currently depleted by various health and other issues, there aren’t many senior members who can pick up the slack when it comes to the monarch’s public duties.

Step forward, then: the Queen, Princess Anne and Sophie, Duchess of Edinburgh, a trio who will henceforth be known as “Charlie’s angels”, if you will. Camilla even has Farrah Fawcett’s blonde, flicky hairstyle.

As in most families, when disaster strikes, it’s the women who step up – in this case, not just on the domestic front, but with matters of state.

Behind Queen Camilla’s countrywoman-who-does-restrained-glamour exterior lies an absolute toughie. She epitomises the quietly able woman with a core of steel who can nurture and egg you on, but when it comes to the crunch, could probably twist your arm behind your back – in the nicest possible way. Any woman who has had to live with the vitriol poured upon her by her critics for so many years must be hard as nails.

“It was horrid,” Camilla once said of the media scrutiny following the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. “I wouldn’t want to put my worst enemy through it.”

In a BBC documentary about the King broadcast on Boxing Day, the Queen was dubbed his “rock” by her sister Annabel Elliot, who also described Camilla as the “yin” to Charles's “yang”. Lady Lansdowne, who has known the pair of them for more than 50 years, said they were an “extraordinary team”: “Whether they’ve had to fight to get there, or whether it’s just because they’ve been through a lot together, it’s made them have a really strong bond.”

Just as Camilla understands her husband’s moods – her approach is said to be to “stand back, let him explode and then just carry on smoothly” – she also knows instinctively what is expected of her as she takes on some of his public duties, without complaint. Just look at her stately composure at the coronation – regal, refined, anointed and (weightily) crowned, as she completed her transformation from Queen Consort to Queen, and so ended years of debate over what (as Charles’s former mistress) she would eventually be called.

Camilla had laid the groundwork for the expectations that will now be placed on her – over recent years, she has graciously and gradually taken on a more prominent position within the royal family, including riding next to the Queen in her Diamond Jubilee carriage procession. She also began to attend the State Opening of Parliament.

The King’s sister, Anne, is also no stranger to hard graft – in fact, the Princess Royal positively revels in it. Last year, she again took the moniker “hardest working” member of The Firm, carrying out 457 public engagements – more than anyone else in her family. In the typical average week, Princess Anne undertook more than a dozen engagements, and was the first to go on an international royal tour this year, when she visited Sri Lanka last month.

She was also the first member of the royal family to return to public engagements after the King’s shock cancer diagnosis, handing out honours at Windsor Castle earlier today to conductor Ivor Bolton, tenor Nicky Spence, rugby union referee Sara Cox and wheelchair rugby league player James Simpson.

She’s involved with more than 300 charitable organisations and one of her biggest causes is the Whitley Fund for Nature, which hosts an annual ceremony that distributes grants worth £500,000 to conservationists around the world. Much like her older brother, she is utterly committed to what she is passionate about and attends each ceremony to present the awards and deliver a speech to attendees. No shirker, Princess Anne – who has previously praised her sister-in-law’s “understanding of the role” of Queen, is a natural choice to bolster Charles’s personal inner circle.

And the King’s sister-in-law, Sophie? Before she married Prince Edward, the Duchess of Edinburgh spent many years working in PR, including a stint at Capital Radio, and running her own company – so if she can manage a bunch of DJs and other celebrities and make good news stories out of pretty much anything, she certainly has the ability and attitude to shoulder a greater role in the royal family.

It is a post she is likely to embrace – after all, Sophie and the Queen shared a close relationship and she was even touted as one of the Queen’s “favourites” among royal pundits. She has had a close relationship with Charles; was spotted enjoying a touching moment with her brother-in-law at the Commonwealth service at Westminster Abbey last year and as Prince Harry and Meghan Markle stepped away from the spotlight, Sophie and Edward stepped into it – with gusto.

And while her husband has now decided to take some time away from his public duties, we shouldn’t expect Sophie to do the same. Au contraire: she’s likely to step up to support not only her spouse, but her brother-in-law, as well. She’s been through her own pain and proved that her strength is in remaining strong in the face of tumult.

So, while nobody would want to step up to the plate while the sovereign is undergoing medical treatment, it is an opportunity for these women of the royal family to demonstrate their soft power, and how it can advance and humanise an institution that so badly needs it. Far better for them to use their skills to create a monarchy which reflects contemporary society and show that it is capable of a better connection with the rest of us. It’s also better for them to be seen to do more than cutting ribbons, waving and wearing nice dresses.

They’re needed now, more than ever – because while they support the King, they’re also supporting other women in The Firm who have been forced to take a step back. Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York and the King’s former sister-in-law, announced in a New Year’s Eve message on social media that she had undergone a successful mastectomy and had “beat breast cancer”. She also let slip she had nicknamed her reconstructed left breast “Derek”. She has since been diagnosed with malignant melanoma, but is in “good spirits”.

Then it was the turn of the Princess of Wales, who quietly underwent major abdominal surgery last month. She is now recuperating at the family home in Windsor, which will put her out of action until after Easter. News of the Princess’s procedure came on the same day it was revealed that the King was also undergoing medical treatment for a benign enlarged prostate – the beginning of his journey.

With health issues and periods of absence having reduced the pool of working royals – Prince William had stepped back from his public duties, to offer support to their three children in the days after his wife’s operation, and Prince Edward had temporarily stepped away from public engagements to recharge after his recent state visits to South Africa and St Helena – it’s clear that Camilla, Anne and Sophie are the real “angels” who will keep everything going.

When Charles returns to the day job, I am sure that he’ll find the family business in rude health – and will hopefully continue to include more women in the day-to-day running of the institution, which still needs to show it understands the British population if it’s to continue into the 21st century and beyond.