In profile: Queen Consort Camilla

Camilla was described as a tomboy and said to possess a “boisterous sense of humour and utter lack of self-consciousness that made her a favourite of both sexes – but especially the boys”. Camilla left Queen’s Gate at the age of 16 with a love of reading – but with only one O Level to her name (in kennel hygiene).

When did Camilla meet her first husband, Andrew Parker Bowles?

After attending finishing schools in Switzerland and France, Camilla returned to London to work briefly as a receptionist at a Mayfair-based decorating firm. It was around this time, in 1965, aged 17, that she first met Andrew Parker Bowles, an officer in the Royal Horse Guards, at a debutante party. The pair proceeded to date on and off for seven years, during which time Andrew was said to also been involved with a number of other women – including Princess Anne, whom he dated briefly in 1970.

When did Camilla meet Prince Charles?

It was in the summer of 1971 when a 24-year-old Camilla first met Prince Charles, who was then 22. A legend has been fostered that the couple were introduced at a polo match at Smith’s Lawn in Windsor, but, according to Jonathan Dimbleby’s authorised biography, The Prince of Wales (1994), the introduction was in fact made by a mutual friend, Lucia Santa Cruz, daughter of the Chilean ambassador to the United Kingdom, whom Charles had met when he was a student at Cambridge.

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Charles and Camilla were instantly attracted to one another and over the next 18 months their friendship became a love affair. But “Charles knew that his parents would not approve of the relationship,” writes Marlene Koenig in this article for HistoryExtra. Camilla’s background, while well-to-do, was not sufficiently aristocratic, and Camilla had what Prince Charles’s godmother, Patricia, 2nd Countess Mountbatten of Burma, described as a “history”.

So it was that as Prince Charles prepared to join HMS Minerva in mid-January 1973 for a seven-month voyage in the Caribbean, he refrained from expressing the depth of his feelings for Camilla. Two months later, in March 1973, Camilla became engaged to Andrew Parker Bowles.

Camilla and Andrew married at Guards’ Chapel, Wellington Barracks, on 4 July 1973. The wedding was attended by Princess Anne and Charles’s grandmother, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother. Charles, meanwhile, sent his regrets from the Minerva.

The following year Camilla gave birth to her first child, a son named Thomas Henry, and just under four years later, in January 1978, welcomed a daughter named Laura. Interestingly, Thomas is today not only Prince Charles’s stepson, but also his godson.

When did Charles and Camilla begin their extra-marital relationship?

In the early years of Camilla’s marriage to Andrew, her relationship with Prince Charles was said to have remained platonic, writes Koenig. But the pair became romantically involved again shortly after the birth of Camilla’s second child, Laura, in early 1978, and in 1979 Charles turned to Camilla for consolation for his grief following the death of his beloved great-uncle, Lord Mountbatten. This second affair lasted until Charles’s engagement to Diana in 1981.

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Camilla remained Charles’s close friend and confidante throughout the 1980s – the pair were seen going to the theatre together and attending many of the same parties – but the prince would insist years later that he had been faithful to Diana until their marriage had “irretrievably broken down”. Charles says he rekindled his affair with Camilla only in 1986, when his marriage was beyond repair. This was five years after he married Diana.

In 1989, while attending the 40th birthday party of Camilla’s sister, Annabel Elliot, at the home of Lady Annabel Goldsmith in London, Diana is reported to have confronted Camilla about the nature of her relationship with her husband. According to Andrew Morton’s controversial 1992 biography, Diana: Her True Story, Diana told Camilla: “I know what’s going on between you and Charles and I just want you to know that.”

Morton claims Camilla told Diana “you’ve got all the men in the world fall in love with you and you’ve got two beautiful children, what more do you want?”, to which Diana responded: “I want my husband.”

The affair reportedly continued, and in the summer of 1994 Charles’s interview with Jonathan Dimbleby was televised “in which he admitted infidelity and revealed both a lack of sympathy for Diana… and a worrying distance from his family,” writes Sarah Gristwood in this article for HistoryExtra.

The following year, in January 1995, Camilla and Andrew announced their divorce. “Throughout our marriage we have always tended to follow rather different interests, but in recent years we have led completely separate lives,” the couple said in a statement. A few months later, in November 1995, Princess Diana gave her famous Panorama interview with Martin Bashir in which she told viewers “there were three of us in this marriage – so it was a bit crowded”. [In 2021, an independent inquiry found that Martin Bashir used deception to secure the interview.]

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Within weeks of the interview, the Queen suggested the couple should divorce – and quickly. Charles’s marriage to Diana was dissolved in August 1996, after four years of separation. On 31 August 1997, Diana was killed in a car accident in Paris.

When did Charles and Camilla get married?

Charles and Camilla kept a low profile in the months after Diana’s death. “Camilla was the wicked witch and marriage wrecker, globally loathed,” said royal expert Ingrid Seward, editor of Majesty magazine. “The Queen really wanted him to say goodbye to her [Camilla], and he refused,” says royal biographer Penny Junor, author of The Duchess: Camilla Parker Bowles and the Love Affair that Rocked the Crown. “This man, who has duty written through him, did not obey his mother on this occasion.”

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It was not until January 1999, some two-and-a-half-years after his divorce from Diana and more than 18 months after her death, that Charles and Camilla made their first public appearance together as a couple. At a 50th birthday party at the Ritz Hotel in London for Camilla's sister, Annabel Elliott, the pair signalled that their long-running love affair was now official.

The couple’s engagement was announced on 10 February 2005, with Camilla wearing a ring widely believed to have come from the Queen Mother's collection. The ring features a five-carat emerald-cut diamond in the centre, and its extensive family heritage means it could be more valuable than more modern royal engagement rings.

Camilla and Charles were married on 9 April 2005 at a civil wedding at Windsor Guildhall, followed by a Service of Blessing at St George's Chapel in Windsor Castle. At the reception, Queen Elizabeth II offered a toast to the newlyweds in which she said: “They have come through and I’m very proud and wish them well. My son is home and dry with the woman he loves.”

Following their marriage, Camilla legally became the Princess of Wales, but because the late Diana, Princess of Wales was primarily known by that name, Camilla instead went by her secondary title, Duchess of Cornwall.

When King Charles III takes the throne, the Duchess of Cornwall will automatically become Queen Consort upon his accession – under common law the spouse of a king automatically becomes queen. But because of uncertainty about public opinion, it was suggested that might not always be the case.

“At the time of their marriage the official intention was for Camilla to be known as the Princess Consort. But plans for her title became more ambiguous in recent years,” BBC News reported.

In a message marking the 70th anniversary of her reign in February 2022, the Queen expressed her desire for Camilla to be known as Queen Consort when Prince Charles becomes king. “Queen Consort” refers to the spouse of a ruling king and would mean “Queen Camilla” as her future title.

“The Queen’s intervention means barriers to her becoming Queen have now been removed, and will allow her to have a fully-fledged royal role beside Charles,” BBC News reported.

Why was it ever in doubt that Camilla would become Queen? According to constitutional experts at University College London’s Constitution Unit, there were two possible reasons why Camilla might not have assumed the title.“The first is the argument voiced by the Daily Mirror and the Daily Mail Online, that Camilla cannot become Queen because her 2005 civil marriage to Prince Charles was not valid. The argument runs as follows: because the Marriage Acts from 1753 have explicitly excepted royal marriages from their provisions, the only valid marriage which a member of the royal family could contract in England was a religious marriage in the Church of England.

“The Lord Chancellor in 2005 defended the validity of the Prince’s civil marriage, as did the Registrar General. But if Camilla became Queen, it might provoke further legal challenges.

“The second possible reason is public opinion. In deference to public opinion, Camilla has not assumed the title Princess of Wales. Prince Charles will no doubt have regard to public opinion at the time of his accession, in deciding whether Camilla should become Queen; and he may also want to seek the advice of the government of the day. The fallback position is that Camilla would become Princess Consort as announced at the time of their marriage.”

How is Camilla portrayed in The Crown?

Camilla’s early relationship with Prince Charles was a key plotline in series three of The Crown, which followed their meeting in the summer of 1971. She was played by Emerald Fennell, who resumed her role in series four.

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In series three of The Crown, Charles confides in Lord Mountbatten that Camilla is “the one” and asks for his great-uncle’s help convincing ‘the family’ to allow them to marry. Horrified at the prospect, Lord Mountbatten is seen conspiring with the Queen Mother to put an end to the relationship; the Queen Mother agrees the idea of marriage is “madness” and says “the sooner that girl is back where she belongs [with Andrew Parker Bowles] the better”.

But in reality there was no such plot, and it is unlikely that Lord Mountbatten was behind arrangements for Prince Charles’s posting abroad. Christopher Wilson, author of A Greater Love: Charles and Camilla, told the Telegraph “I have never heard [such a plot] suggested at all.”

The series also explores Camilla’s on-off relationship with Andrew Parker Bowles, who, it is suggested, is Camilla’s first choice. Princess Anne, following her brief courtship with Parker Bowles, is seen telling her mother in series three that Andrew is “Camilla’s first love and the man she’s still devoted to…. She likes Charles, but she’s obsessed with Andrew.”

Camilla and Andrew marry in the penultimate episode of series three, while a distraught Prince Charles, thousands of miles away in the West Indies aboard HMS Minerva, is seen crying alone in his cabin.

Season four of The Crown, which landed on Netflix in November 2020, picked up in the late 1970s and featured Charles’s relationship with Princess Diana as a central plotline.

The series also explored Charles’s extramarital affairs with Camilla and the love triangle than ensued between Charles, Camilla and Diana. Season four showed Diana’s torturous lunch with Camilla soon after she became engaged to Charles – there, at every turn Diana was reminded of how little she knew her future husband, and how well Camilla did. “Darling, you really know nothing, do you?” The infamous ‘G’ & ‘F’ bracelet – a bracelet Charles had designed for Camilla – also featured.

The Crown’s creator Peter Morgan told Esquire: “Charles’s campaign to make Camilla queen is as passionate and as committed and as ruthless, in many ways, as was Henry VIII’s campaign to make Anne Boleyn his queen.”

This article was first published by HistoryExtra in September 2020 and has since been updated