For most of his life, or at least since he was old enough to comprehend it, the Prince of Wales has been thoroughly aware of, and preparing for, the unique role written into his future. Yet little could have adequately prepared him for the position he now finds himself in: as a husband and father desperately trying to hold his family together while his wife undergoes treatment for cancer. It is a summons nobody ever hopes to face in life, but all too many do.

“Some people liken a cancer diagnosis in a family to a trauma, because after that one conversation it feels as if nothing will be the way it used to be,” says Karin Sieger, a psychotherapist who specialises in supporting people affected by cancer, as well as their families and children.

Prince William and Princess Catherine in November 2023.Credit: Getty

The particular challenges of being in Prince William’s position at the moment are vast and far-ranging. In the first instance, he is on-hand to offer immediate emotional and physical support to his wife, the Princess of Wales; he also will have helped her delicately explain the situation to their children, George, Charlotte and Louis, as well as field their questions in return; and he will need to take on more domestic responsibilities at Adelaide Cottage, the family’s home in Windsor, where the Waleses have no live-in staff.

Outside the home, he’ll be the point of contact for friends and relatives seeking updates and trying not to disturb the princess with a bombardment of well-wishes – a task far greater than it first seems. All of this in addition to his day-to-day responsibilities as a working member of the royal family.

Sieger, who has personal experience with cancer, including twice being diagnosed herself, points out the loneliness of that multi-faceted pressure. “What often happens is that you don’t feel entitled to say you’re struggling with it all because the focus is so much on your partner, the patient.

“A diagnosis in the family can make people feel as if they’ve lost control of their life, because it’s now all up to a medical team who are likely strangers. The patient starts to feel like a bystander in their own fate, but so does the spouse.”

One of the challenges is that treatment leaves the patient and their loved ones suspended in a state of uncertainty. “So people could say, for example, ‘Oh, she’s not lost her hair in chemotherapy, it must be OK?’ but nobody knows that for certain and, for a partner, that constant uncertainty is what is so destabilising.”

One husband and father who cared for his wife during her leukaemia treatment still remembers that most: “You wake up and you don’t know what that day holds,” he admits.