I think they did anticipate the brouhaha – it was mentioned in the initial statement, “the princess understands the interest this will generate” etc – but whatever happened was on too short notice to put proper crisis comms in place, and somewhat unprecedented. I do think they overestimated the publics intelligence and shouldn’t have used the word “planned”, which can simply mean surgery was decided on the night before, with an opportunity to fast, take pre-op meds, etc, as that’s led to much of the scrutiny and speculation from people interpreting it as “on the cards for months”. They couldn’t use “emergency” as that really would set the cat among the pigeons. “Unanticipated” might have been wiser but really, nothing in earth could have quelled the rumour mill; Kate is such clickbait, the media need the story of her absence in the absence of her being the story.
I do agree it’s been horribly managed since then, but I don’t think the palaces do crisis comms well – you’d think they would, post-Diana, post-Megxit. But really they’re all about the preparation: look at operation London Bridge, the royal media machine is similar in that it likes to control, to leave nothing to chance; always forgetting that humans are fallible and do unexpected things.
Plus I think their whole PR game is reeling in the absence of being able to use Harry as scapegoat or Meghan as Tory. Papers could cope without Kate clicks for 3 months if they were fed a steady drumbeat of Meghan. The slimmed-down monarchy makes absolute sense in terms of making an outmoded system vaguely palatable to a modern era, but its weakness is the lack of stars. They’ve got two major players on the bench; Wills and Camilla isn’t exactly a dream duo.