It was supposed to be a routine meeting of the “Way Ahead Group,” the ultra-secret committee of senior royals and courtiers that decides the future shape of the monarchy. But when the double doors to the Bow Room closed at 11:07 a.m. yesterday, what unfolded inside was anything but routine.

Princess Anne, never one to mince words, is said to have slammed her folder onto the mahogany table, looked King Charles’s private secretary straight in the eye, and delivered a sentence that has left the entire royal household reeling:

“It’s time Catherine had a crown of her own.”

Six words. Six words that, according to four separate sources inside the room, stopped the meeting dead for almost thirty seconds – an eternity in royal protocol.

With King Charles continuing to battle the pancreatic cancer that has kept him largely out of public view since early 2025, and Queen Camilla quietly withdrawing from almost all engagements citing “exhaustion,” the Princess Royal apparently decided enough was enough. The monarchy, she argued, could no longer drift under a visibly frail King and an increasingly absent consort. Britain needed certainty. And certainty, in Anne’s view, now wears soft caramel coats and a calm smile: Catherine, Princess of Wales.

Eyewitnesses say Anne was brutal in her clarity.

“Catherine has carried this family on her back for two years,” she reportedly thundered. “She has smiled through chemotherapy, kept the children steady, held William together, and given the public the only face of the Crown they still trust. While others retreated, she advanced. If we are serious about survival – real survival – we stop pretending the future begins in ten years. It began the moment she walked back onto the balcony at Trooping with no hair and all our hope.”

The room, packed with the most powerful figures in the royal firmament – the Lord Chamberlain, the Keeper of the Privy Purse, the King’s private secretary, and several senior members of the household – reportedly sat in stunned silence.

Then, in an unprecedented move, Anne laid out her plan.

A Regency is no longer enough, she argued. Charles’s illness is unpredictable. Public confidence is haemorrhaging. The logical – and, she insisted, morally right – step is to accelerate the inevitable: declare Catherine Princess Regent with full sovereign powers immediately, and simultaneously announce that, upon the King’s death or permanent incapacity, she will be proclaimed Queen Catherine without the traditional interlude of a Prince of Wales reign.

In other words: William skips straight to King, Catherine straight to Queen beside him – no delay, no uncertainty, no vacuum for republican voices to exploit.

Sources say Anne even had draft proclamations ready, drawn up in secret with two constitutional lawyers over the past six weeks. One palace veteran described the documents as “the most radical reimagining of the line of succession since 1936 – only this time, nobody has to abdicate.”

The reaction inside the room was electric – and divided.

Some courtiers allegedly cheered. Others turned white. One reportedly whispered, “This is how monarchies end – or how they save themselves.”

But the most dramatic moment came when Anne allegedly turned directly to the empty chair where Queen Camilla would normally sit and added, voice dripping with ice:

“Certain people spent decades angling for a crown they were never born to wear. Catherine never angled for anything. She simply became impossible to imagine the throne without. That, gentlemen, is the difference between scheming for a title and earning one.”

Camilla, informed of the meeting’s outcome while resting at Ray Mill, is said to have gone “deathly quiet” before telling aides she would “not stand in the way of what is best for the institution.” Translation: she knows the tide has turned.

By late afternoon yesterday, emergency drafting sessions were already underway in the Lord Chamberlain’s office. William and Catherine, briefed at Anmer Hall, reportedly listened in silence before Catherine – ever the conciliator – asked only one question: “Will this help the King rest easier?” When told it almost certainly would remove the burden of day-to-day decisions from his shoulders, she is said to have nodded once and replied, “Then tell Anne we’re ready.”

As of this morning, royal watchers have noticed an extraordinary flurry of activity: black Bentleys racing in and out of Buckingham Palace gates, the Union flag above the palace mysteriously lowered to half-mast and then raised again (some say a test run), and the College of Arms quietly pulling heraldic files marked “Catherine R” – the traditional designation for a Queen Regnant.

Downing Street has refused to comment, but a senior Number 10 source admitted: “If the Palace formally requests enabling legislation for an expanded Regency with provision for immediate proclamation, the Prime Minister will bring it to Parliament within days. The public appetite is overwhelming.”

And the public? Social media is on fire. #QueenCatherineNow has been trending worldwide for eighteen hours straight. Polls conducted overnight show 78% approval for Catherine taking the reins immediately – the highest royal rating in modern history.

Whether King Charles will sign the necessary instruments before Christmas remains the only question. Palace insiders say Anne has already made it clear: if sentimentality or outdated tradition delays the inevitable, she will force a vote of the entire royal family at Sandringham this December – and she knows she has the numbers.

For the first time in a thousand years, a British monarch may be crowned not because of blood alone, but because a no-nonsense aunt in a Barbour jacket looked at a brave woman battling cancer and said, out loud, what millions have been thinking:

The crown already belongs to Catherine.

She just hasn’t been allowed to wear it yet.