Who will be the public face of the monarchy as King Charles is treated for cancer?

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When Queen Camilla was at a musical concert celebrating local charities in southwestern England on Thursday evening, it was inevitable she would be asked about King Charles.

It was her first public outing since Buckingham Palace announced on Monday that the 75-year-old monarch had been diagnosed with an undisclosed form of cancer, and was beginning outpatient treatment for it.

Camilla said Charles is "doing extremely well under the circumstances," according to several media reports, and is "very touched by all the letters and messages the public have been sending him from everywhere."

Appearances such as Camilla's at Salisbury Cathedral and other events Prince William and Princess Anne attended this past week are likely to be the public face of the monarchy as Charles steps back from public duties during treatment. And in some instances, other senior members of the family may stand in for the King, too.

"You might think of it as a sort of job share," said Craig Prescott, a constitutional expert and lecturer in law at Royal Holloway, University of London, in an interview.

"The formal constitutional stuff — it's still going to be the King doing it, but his engagements, I presume some of those will be cancelled, rearranged and [for] some, William and other members of the Royal Family will fill in."

Charles's sister, Anne, had a particularly busy day on Wednesday, with four engagements that took her from Windsor to Nottingham and back south to London in the evening for an event at the Science Museum.

As much as there is the sense that other members of the family could step in for Charles, any reduction in royal public appearances — for the simple reason there are fewer available people to do them — could reinforce how he has been envisioning the future of the monarchy.

"The King has been planning to slim down the Royal Family, the working Royal Family. For the last 20-odd years, he's been talking about it, and very vocally in the last 10," said Judith Rowbotham, a social and cultural scholar and visiting research professor at the University of Plymouth in southwestern England, in an interview.

"This may be speeding up a certain amount of reduction, in particularly the local commitments that the senior Royals will do."

Charles's cancer treatment comes at the same time his daughter-in-law, Catherine, Princess of Wales, recovers from abdominal surgery. She is not expected to resume public duties until after Easter. Prince William stepped back from public duties temporarily to support her and their three young children, but did carry out two engagements this week. 

"It seems that the King and Queen have absolutely endorsed William's decision to prioritize spending time with his wife," said Rowbotham.

"His engagements [Wednesday] have been local, Windsor Castle and London, so he can get back soon. I think more than anything else, what this means is that for the rest of this month and next month, he won't be undertaking any planned extensive trips where he can't go somewhere for a day and then come back."