The shameful speculation about the Princess of Wales’s health has to stop

People seem think the public own the rights to her mental and physical state – what happened to manners, grace and sensitivity?

Among the hours of television coverage and the acres of print that “manipulated” image prompted, one frequently expressed sentiment stood out: “The public have a right to be angry.”
The pomposity of this sentiment – which has been voiced by different people in different ways over the past 36 hours – is breathtaking. It stayed with me even after the Princess of Wales issued a statement apologising for what she claims to be a mundane error in judgment:
Like many amateur photographers, I do occasionally experiment with editing. I wanted to express my apologies for any confusion the family photograph we shared yesterday caused. I hope everyone celebrating had a very happy Mother’s Day. C
Whether she was taking the blame for an error in judgement that wasn’t hers, we’ll never know. Certainly, the machine there to support, advise and prevent such blunders has failed her.
It’s worth remembering that after a two and a half month public absence (she was last seen at Sandringham on Christmas Day), this presumably still fragile 42-year-old woman was effectively bullied into releasing a snap by the endless conspiracy theories – theories that are now 10-fold, with the conjectures currently being touted on social media running from wild – “has she left Prince William?” – to preposterous – “a case of facial surgery gone wrong?” 
As a journalist who is frequently (and erroneously) assumed to be “in the know”, I received so many WhatsApp messages asking me what the “real story” is, that I was forced to mute my phone.
All this despite the palace’s clear initial statement that after undergoing “successful” abdominal surgery in January, our future Queen would not be resuming official duties before April.
We are not yet in mid-March, I’ll remind you, so at this point there is no reason to suspect anything is amiss, no basis for our gaining impatience, and no excuse for the shameful prurience being exhibited around the world on the precise state of the Princess’s health. Human beings are curious by nature, it’s true, yet like everything else about her – from her outfits and her make-up to her marriage and her children – we seem to have taken ownership of her mental and physical state. It is, apparently, in the public domain, ours to speculate and gossip about, with every basic rule of etiquette concerning an individual’s health apparently forgotten.
Once upon a time, health matters were up there with personal finances, emotional affairs, sexual orientation and religious beliefs. To probe into any of these areas wasn’t just considered inappropriate, but appallingly rude. Even if you knew a person well, my mother explained to me as a child, after an embarrassing incident when I’d asked a dinner party guest why she was “taking those pills”, you never asked why a person was taking medication, had been in hospital or what the exact nature of a procedure or operation was.
Over the years, I’ve watched our manners, grace and sensitivity around such intimate matters erode to such an extent that grown adults will now think nothing of asking “what those pills are for”, “where that rash came from” or why women of a child-bearing age are not drinking. On one recent occasion, I even overheard a man repeatedly ask a woman who had turned down a glass of wine whether she was “up the duff” (she wasn’t, as it happens – but she was in AA).
Our culture of oversharing hasn’t helped. As helpful as I’m sure it has been for public figures to speak openly about their addictions, dysfunctions and health battles, to break various taboos and bust stigmas, nobody should feel under obligation to discuss such matters, let alone become a poster-carrying, T-shirt wearing figurehead for a particular ailment or affliction. Yet again, our incivility around health is now such that I’ve heard public figures being criticised for not being open about their cancers, alcoholism or acne.
Where women in the public eye are concerned, the pressure is still more concerted. Tell us about your infertility, your endometriosis, your menopausal woes! You owe it to all women to be open about those things.  
Take that pressure, times it by a million, and you might have some idea what it feels like to be a female member of the Royal family in 2024.
“The public has a right to feel angry” if the Princess of Wales doesn’t share every last gory detail with them. Isn’t that the takeaway from this whole sorry Mother’s Day picture scenario? And what would it take to end our ghoulish speculations, to sate our rubbernecking, out of interest? Lab reports shared on Instagram and X? Live video-footage from the hospital bed on TikTok?
When it comes to the Princess’s health – to anyone’s health – we’re not entitled to know a thing. We can continue to wish her well, of course, but the “rights”? They are all hers.