LONDON β THE LONDON PRAT β This column began as a straightforward investigation into whether Prince William is, as some corners of the internet have suggested, weak.
It did not survive contact with the facts.
Here is what we know. In January 2024, Catherine, Princess of Wales, went into hospital for surgery. Cancer was not expected. It was found anyway. William, by the account of those around him, went from "fairly resolute" to something considerably less so in the space of a phone call. A royal biographer described the moment as feeling like being hit by a bus. "One moment life was normal," the account reads, "and the next, everything changed."
This is not a unique experience. This is, in fact, the most ordinary devastating experience in the world. It happens every day, in every postcode, to people who do not have a communications team and whose parking is not validated. What made William's version unusual is that he then had to go and cut a ribbon somewhere.
Earlier this year, William appeared on Heart FM. No script. No prepared remarks. Just a presenter, a microphone, and a question about Kate. What came out was this: "She's an amazing mom, an amazing wife and literally our family couldn't cope without her. So she's been absolutely stunning, brilliant."
The nation clutched its pearls so hard several were lost down the back of the sofa.
In fairness, we are not accustomed to this. The preferred British mode of spousal appreciation is a brief nod at the Christmas table and the occasional "she's all right, I suppose" delivered to a friend at the pub. William saying his wife is amazing, out loud, on the radio, in a sentence that didn't end with "for a woman" β this was always going to cause trouble.
Not hard. Not challenging. Not a demanding period requiring resilience. The hardest. Harder than losing his mother at nine years old, which gives you some sense of what 2024 actually felt like from the inside.
He described trying to balance protecting Kate, protecting three children who were watching everything, and supporting a father who was also β simultaneously, with magnificent timing β going through his own cancer diagnosis. All while continuing to carry out royal duties because the alternative was leaving the institution understaffed at exactly the moment it needed to appear functional.
"Tricky," William called it. The British understatement of the decade, and this decade has had some competition.
Speaking to actor Eugene Levy on Apple TV+, William said: "When it does happen to you, then it takes you into some pretty not great places."
Some pretty not great places. There is an entire lifetime of keeping-it-together compressed into that phrase. The 3am hospital corridor. The school run where you smile because the children are watching. The meetings you attend while your mind is somewhere else entirely. The vending machine sandwich eaten in a car park because you needed five minutes where nobody needed anything from you.
Every person who has ever loved someone through a serious illness knows exactly which places he means. They are very specific places. They all have terrible lighting.
George was eleven. Charlotte was eight. Louis was five. None of them asked for any of this and none of them had the vocabulary for it. William described his approach with a candour that is quietly devastating: "You never quite know the knock-on effects it can have. And so it's just important to be there for each other and to kind of reassure the children that everything is okay."
The "kind of" in that sentence is doing enormous work. It is the sound of a parent saying something to children that he is not entirely sure is true, because the alternative β telling three small people that he genuinely doesn't know how this ends β is not something anyone can do at breakfast on a Tuesday.
Every parent in that situation does the same thing. William just did it while the press was outside the school gates.
In January 2025, Catherine visited the Royal Marsden Hospital, where she had received much of her treatment. She spoke to another patient's family and said: "I feel like it's sometimes for the loved ones around us. They need support just as much as I did as the patient."
She was talking about cancer caregiving broadly. She was also, whether she intended it or not, describing her husband's year. The man she was describing spent 2024 being quietly, persistently, determinedly there β for her, for the children, for his father, for the institution β and then got on a radio and said she was brilliant.
The nerve of him.
When Levy told William the good news β that Kate had announced remission in January 2025 β William's response was: "I'm so proud of my wife and my father for how they've handled all of last year. My children managed brilliantly, as well."
Proud. Not "thank God that's over." Not "what a relief, back to normal." Proud of how they handled it. That is the instinct of someone who was watching closely the whole time, who knows exactly what it cost each of them, and who considers getting through it with any grace whatsoever to be a genuine achievement. Because it is.
Some have called him weak. Some have written think pieces. Several columnists have raised the question of whether a future king ought to be quite so openly fond of his wife. Others have described his emotional transparency as troubling, concerning, or β in one memorable formulation β "a little much."
We, as a nation, watched a man hold his family together through a year that contained two cancer diagnoses, three frightened children, and a relentless public schedule, and our primary response was: is he being too sincere about it?
Extraordinary. We are genuinely extraordinary.
The Mental Health Foundation has spent years documenting the cost of telling men that expressing difficulty is a character flaw. The numbers are not good. The outcomes are not good. The funerals, when they happen, are not good.
Into that context, the heir to the British throne went on national radio and said he worries about his wife, loves his children, found 2024 almost unbearable, and is proud of how his family survived it. Without shame. Without the mandatory British disclaimer. Without the concluding "anyway, mustn't grumble."
He just said it.
We have spent several centuries producing men who cannot do that. We should perhaps be more pleased that one of the most visible men in the country has managed it, even if the method β going on Heart FM β lacks a certain classical dignity.
Weak men disappear when things get hard. They find reasons to be elsewhere. They are very busy, suddenly, with things that cannot wait. They come back when the difficult part is over and describe themselves as having been supportive.
William does not appear to have done any of that. He reduced his public schedule to be present. He sat through the frightening parts. He reassured children when he wasn't sure himself. He cut the ribbons anyway when they needed cutting. He called it the hardest year of his life and he said it like a fact, not a complaint.
Weak? The charge does not survive examination.
In love? The evidence is extensive, peer-reviewed, and publicly available on the radio.
Court adjourned. β€οΈππ
Auf Wiedersehen, amigo!
The Americans are equally baffled, merely louder about it. Find them at Bohiney.com.
The London Prat has covered British bewilderment since 1961. We have never once resolved it. We are comfortable with this.
SOURCE: https://prat.uk/is-prince-william-weak-or-just-hopelessly-in-love/