Kate did not attend Royal Ascot in 2024 because she was having chemotherapy. She did not attend in 2025 because, as Kensington Palace described it at the time, she was “finding the right balance” in returning to public duties, a phrase so carefully constructed to communicate nothing medically useful while sounding like it does that it has become the palace’s official second language.
She showed up Wednesday in a vibrant yellow Roksanda dress and a Jane Taylor hat so large it qualifies as a structural element. She arrived in the carriage procession alongside Prince William and her mother Carole Middleton. The crowd was warm. The photographs were excellent. The palace released no new medical information, which is consistent with every day since her cancer diagnosis was announced in March 2024.
What is publicly known about Kate’s health fits in a sentence. She had abdominal surgery in January 2024. Cancer was announced in March. She completed chemotherapy in September. She announced remission in early 2025. She has been gradually resuming engagements since. The palace’s position is that the details of her treatment are private, which is fair, and that she is doing well, which is the only statement they have issued since remission, and which they will continue to issue until something changes, at which point they will still describe it as “continued progress” for as long as possible.
What the carriage procession photographs communicate, in the absence of actual medical updates, is that she appears well, she is clearly glad to be there, and the hat is doing serious work. HELLO! called her return “triumphant.” This is the correct word. Three years is a long time to stay away from horse racing.
Carole Middleton, 71 years old, does not appear to have missed a single event and looked completely comfortable in the whole arrangement, which is somehow the most reassuring detail in the entire story.
When the most complete royal health update available is a photograph of the patient waving happily from a carriage, and the patient is clearly waving with genuine feeling, who exactly is the silence protecting?
Sources
