It is no secret that the royal family has been struggling with a battering wave of illnesses before and throughout 2024. With King Charles’s cancer diagnosis followed by the Princess of Wales, Kate Middleton, revealing she also had cancer, and Queen Camilla struggling with ongoing health issues, it seems the royals can’t seem to shake the cloud of sickness hovering above. Now that Middleton has turned a corner on her health journey and slowly begun to return to her royal duties, the focus is now fixated on King Charles and Queen Camilla. For his part, King Charles seems determined to fulfill his duties, chin up and clear-eyed, but that hasn’t stopped people from wondering what would happen if King Charles died before Queen Camilla.
Now that Queen Camilla is battling an ongoing chest infection, the public has switched courses. The royal family is notorious for concealing any illness to continue to present a strong front. With Queen Camilla continuing to only make it to a chosen few of her usual duties, it has started casual wonderings as to what would happen should she pass away before King Charles. What would happen to her duties? Would anyone else take over her title? Well, it turns out not much would change. Here’s what we know about the nitty-gritty details.
What would happen if Queen Camilla were to pass away
When King Charles took over the throne after his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, tragically passed away, it meant that his wife, Camilla Parker Bowles, became Queen Camilla. However, her title outside of this is Queen Consort — the title given to the wife of a king with royal blood. While Queen Camilla has her own distant royal heritage, it’s not the same as the lineage necessary to hold the throne.
Should the Queen Consort pass away before the King does, most things would stay the same. Any title the Queen Consort held would cease to exist, as the person holding it no longer exists. All duties the Queen Consort was responsible for would revert to the King — the ultimate monarch in charge of all duties. Of course, King Charles would remain as King. More than likely, there would also be a royal funeral, although it would be different from the one held for Queen Elizabeth II. So far, Queen Camilla has yet to dictate what she would expect for her funeral, which at least indicates that her health concerns are not dire.
