Her greatest challenge

The Princess of Wales faced her most difficult year with stoicism and consideration for her young family

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The Princess of Wales has endured a year of unprecedented personal challenges nine months of treatment and a necessary retreat from royal life in the face of "preventative chemotherapy" for an undisclosed form of cancer.

From the moment she shared the news that she, like the King, was undergoing treatment for the disease, Kate, 42, showed calmness and courage.

After initially keeping her diagnosis private, until she had been able to process it with her husband the Prince and their young children in what was "an incredibly tough couple of months for our entire family", she has since kept an anxious public informed in her own way, with two very personal video messages.

In the first, released in March, a pale and strained-looking Princess explained that she was undergoing "preventative chemotherapy", after planned abdominal surgery she had undergone two months earlier had revealed the disease.