Royal experts explain King Charles’ strategic move to protect Kate Middleton

The Princess of Wales is currently recovering from major abdominal surgery, with Kensington Palace releasing a rare statement to announce the news last week.

"Her Royal Highness The Princess of Wales was admitted to hospital yesterday for planned abdominal surgery," read the official statement. "The surgery was successful and it is expected that she will remain in hospital for ten to fourteen days, before returning home to continue her recovery. Based on the current medical advice, she is unlikely to return to public duties until after Easter."

The statement continued: “The Princess of Wales appreciates the interest this statement will generate. She hopes that the public will understand her desire to maintain as much normality for her children as possible; and her wish that her personal medical information remains private. Kensington Palace will, therefore, only provide updates on Her Royal Highness’ progress when there is significant new information to share."

In an even more unprecedented move, a statement was released about King Charles' health less than two hours later, confirming that the monarch would be having a "corrective" procedure on his prostate the following week, and that his condition was "benign".

According to royal experts, the timing of these two statements was no coincidence, with it thought that King Charles made his statement in an effort to protect his daughter-in-law and her privacy.

"I think they clearly did do it deliberately, they will have waited until Kate's operation was successful and they would have thought 'let's shift the attention slightly away from that and the speculation', so they'd cap it with Charles' which was a more procedural operation, less significant and one where he could use his public service role to remind men of a certain age to get their prostate checked," explained Tesssa Dunlop, royal historian and author, via OK!.

"Even if everyone is more interested in Kate, he is the King. By saying what Charles' condition is, that also takes up a bit of the 'oxygen'. They'll share with us Charles's condition, but not Kate's and that's their prerogative, I think it is also designed to protect Kate."

"He knows how vital Kate is," Dunlop continued. "She's a vital cog in the royal machine. The main message to the Royal Family is don't take Kate for granted, she's their workhorse and their show pony - she is someone they really do need to take care of."

We will continue to update this story.