It’s the question everyone in British society and in the corridors of power is thinking, but nobody will publicly ask, let alone answer: Just how sick is King Charles III? The chatter that King Charles is significantly more unwell than his aides are letting on is proliferating in British society.Speaking to friends of the king in recent weeks about his health, the most common response is a lowering of the voice by half an octave or so, followed by the sombre, drawn-out pronouncement: “It’s not good.

His officials didn’t respond to formal requests for comment on the matter from The Daily Beast. To be clear, his team have made it very clear, since the king disclosed his cancer diagnosis earlier this year—in an unprecedented act of royal transparency—that they wouldn’t be providing a “running commentary” on his health.The king has never said what specific type of cancer he has been diagnosed with, apart from to say it was not prostate cancer. He is understood to be making regular visits to London for radiotherapy treatment, which can be used to treat many different types of cancer.

Of course, were Charles a private individual, his health would be nobody’s business but his own. But he is the leader of a hereditary monarchy, a head of state who can only be removed by death (or abdication, but that doesn’t seem likely to happen given the late Queen Elizabeth’s precedent). Much as his office may not wish to acknowledge it, his prognosis is very much a matter of public interest. It is certainly preoccupying some individuals in certain branches of government.

The Daily Beast has been told, for example, that not only are Charles’ funeral plans being regularly updated but that a document reviewing what went well after the queen’s funeral, and what could be done better next time a monarch dies—a kind of “lessons learned” crossed with a scorecard, the most esoteric of business reviews—is circulating in Whitehall…The government department responsible for state funerals, the Cabinet Office, declined to comment on claims that the Operation Menai Bridge (as Charles’ funeral plan is codenamed) document is being regularly updated, but again emphasized that making no comment on such plans was routine.

Friends of the family and insiders are genuinely distraught at the prospect that the U.K. could lose its king far sooner than any had imagined, but they are trying to stay positive.One old friend of the family, for example, told The Daily Beast, “Of course he is determined to beat it and they are throwing everything at it. Everyone is staying optimistic, but he is really very unwell. More than they are letting on.”The same source told The Royalist that the late Queen Elizabeth was dying of bone marrow cancer in the months before she died, which was subsequently confirmed by royal friend and biographer Gyles Brandreth.

Compounding the sense of gloom, multiple sources have told The Daily Beast that officials are now regularly reviewing copies of the several-hundred-page “Menai Bridge” document.All royal family members have bridge-based codewords to be used at their death—Queen Elizabeth’s death plan was famously “Operation London Bridge.” Menai Bridge is a dramatic suspension bridge that connects the island of Anglesey with the Welsh mainland.