This is no prince meets princess story. Instead, King Charles and Queen Camilla’s love story is one marked by scandal, heartbreak and missed chances – stretching across five tumultuous decades.
If they had met in today’s world, their relationship might have been embraced instantly by a more progressive Royal Family. But back then, it was considered doomed from the start.
Camilla, with her love of horses and down-to-earth charm, was the perfect fun-filled antidote to Charles’ sensitive side. Yet their relationship was deemed to be unsuitable for a future king. For one, Camilla didn’t fit the image of the “ideal” royal bride – rumoured not to meet the outdated expectation of being a virgin – and she didn’t come from aristocratic stock.
Accepting that a future together seemed impossible, they both married others. Those marriages would end in divorce, but their love never faded. With the couple celebrating their 20th wedding anniversary earlier this month, we’re looking back at the ups and downs of their journey – and the many hurdles they overcame to be together.
Charles and Camilla first met in 1970 at a polo match in Windsor Great Park, where they were introduced by their mutual friend Lucia Santa Cruz.
The pair immediately hit it off and Camilla is said to have cracked a saucy joke about her own great-grandmother having an affair with King Edward VII, supposedly telling Charles: “My great-grandmother was the mistress of your great-great-grandfather. I feel we have something in common.”
According to royal author Penny Junor, Charles was immediately smitten. “He loved the fact that she smiled with her eyes as well as her mouth, and laughed at the same silly things as he did,” Junor wrote in her book, The Duchess: The Untold Story.
“He also liked that she was so natural and easy and friendly, not in any way overawed by him, not fawning or sycophantic. In short, he was very taken with her, and after that first meeting he began ringing her up.”
The pair dated steadily until Charles left to serve with the Royal Navy in the Caribbean for eight months. However, as Charles’s relative Patricia Mountbatten told Bedell Smith, there were “obvious problems” with the idea of Camilla marrying the future King.
Though it seems old fashioned now, the fact that Camilla had a dating history was a major strike against her. “The conventions of the time called for the heir to the British throne to marry a woman who at least appeared to be virginal,” Bedell Smith wrote.
“You didn’t want a past that hung about,” Mountbatten said. Knowing that they could never marry, they reluctantly called off their romance. By the time Charles returned, Camilla was engaged to his sister Anne’s ex, Andrew Parker Bowles. They married in 1973 and stayed together until 1995.
Charles is said to have been devastated and apparently tried to stop Camilla from marrying Andre. According to Penny Junor: “It seemed to him particularly cruel, he wrote in one letter, that after ‘such a blissful, peaceful and mutually happy relationship,’ fate had decreed that it should last a mere six months.” Despite his devastation, the pair remained close friends.
By late 1978 or early 1979, the star-crossed lovers are said to have begun an affair – which Andrew Parker Bowles was apparently fully aware of. “Andrew was in no position to complain; and when he discovered what was going on, he wisely didn’t make a fuss,” Junor wrote.
“Some would say that a part of him actually quite enjoyed the fact that his wife was sleeping with the future King; he might have felt differently had Charles been a traveling salesman.”
But their renewed romance didn’t alter the fact that Charles needed to find a bride of his own, and in 1980 he started dating the late Diana Spencer. Born into the aristocracy and said to have still been a virgin, the 19-year-old was deemed to be the perfect partner for Charles, then 32, but their union was ill-fated from the outset.
The couple allegedly met just 13 times in six months before he popped the question on February 3, 1981. And once engaged, Diana was moved into Buckingham Palace for her own protection, where she is said to have felt isolated and alone.
While Charles was on a tour of Australia, Camilla reached out and invited Diana for lunch and apparently grilled the future Princess of Wales about her plans to hunt.
“The friendly note invited her to lunch. It was during that meeting, arranged to coincide with Prince Charles’ trip to Australia and New Zealand, that Diana became suspicious. Camilla kept asking if Diana was going to hunt when she moved to Highgrove,” Andrew Morton wrote in his book, Diana: Her True Story—In Her Own Words.
“Nonplussed by such an odd question, Diana replied in the negative. The relief on Camilla’s face was clear. Diana later realised that Camilla saw Charles’ love of hunting as a conduit to maintaining her own relationship with him.”
Just before Charles and Diana’s wedding in July 1981, Diana famously discovered a bracelet that her husband-to-be had made for Camilla. Crafted from solid gold, it featured a pendant engraved with the letters F and G – believed to stand for Fred and Gladys, Charles and Camilla’s pet names taken from a sketch from The Goon Show.
Diana hit the roof but said that Charles still insisted on hand-delivering the gift to his ex two days before their wedding. And while on honeymoon, Charles wore cufflinks featuring two intertwined C’s – a gift from Camilla.
“”I said, ‘Camilla gave you those didn’t she?’ He said, ‘Yes, so what’s wrong? They’re a present from a friend,'” Diana once recalled. “And boy, did we have a row. Jealousy, total jealousy. And it was such a good idea, the two C’s, but it wasn’t that clever.”
As Charles and Diana’s marriage floundered, he reportedly restarted his affair with Camilla in 1986. Diana said she was fully aware of what was going on and pleaded with Camilla to step away. In recordings she made for author Andrew Morton’s book, she recalled confronting her love rival, admitting, “I was terrified of her.”
“I said, ‘I know what’s going on between you and Charles and I just want you to know that. She said to me, ‘You’ve got everything you ever wanted. All the men in the world fall in love with you and you’ve got two beautiful children, what more would you want?’… So I said, ‘I want my husband.'”
Diana added: “‘I’m sorry I’m in the way… and it must be hell for both of you. But I do know what’s going on. Don’t treat me like an idiot.'” In an interview with ITV in 1994, Prince Charles was asked if he tried to be “faithful and honourable” to Princess Diana when they were married.
As his affair with Camilla had already been exposed to the public, Prince Charles replied: “Yes … until it became irretrievably broken down, us both having tried.” He also said of Camilla, “Mrs. Parker Bowles is a great friend of mine … a friend for a very long time. She will continue to be a friend for a very long time.”
Just three months after Charles and Diana publicly separated, an intimate telephone conversation between Charles and his lover Camilla, which took place back in 1989, was leaked to the press. Alongside the leaked transcript was a tape of the full audio.
During the conversation, the then-Prince of Wales referred to being reincarnated as a sanitary product in order to be closer to his lover.
Camilla teased that he could turn into a pair of knickers, before Charles quipped about becoming a period product instead. “God forbid, a Tampax. Just my luck!” he laughed. “My luck to be chucked down the lavatory and go on and on forever swirling round on the top, never going down. Until the next one comes through.”
Diana’s reaction to the scandalous recording was revealed by former personal protection officer Ken Wharfe in his book Guarding Diana: Protecting The Princess Around The World. Said to have been initially delighted, Diana apparently quipped: “Game, set and match,” as she clutched a copy of the transcript.
However, she was also apparently floored by the nature of the conversation. “Later, however, she told me that she had been genuinely shocked by some of the baser comments, particular the Prince’s tampon reference,” Mr Wharfe added.
After years of scandals and rumours, Charles and Camilla finally went public with their romance a year after Diana’s death in 1997. The couple were photographed together for the very first time at the Ritz for Camilla’s sister’s birthday party in 1999.
The now Queen Consort then moved into the official London residence of Clarence House in 2003. Two years later, the pair formally announced their engagement before marrying on April 9, 2005 – 35 years after the first encounter. At the time, Charles released a statement saying the occasion would mark a “very special day for us and our families”.
While Princes William and Harry also released a statement, saying: “We are both very happy for our father and Camilla, and we wish them all the luck in the future.”
Charles knew he had to wait for the right moment before introducing his former lover as his new partner to his children William and Harry.
The princes were well aware of the infidelity in their parents’ marriage and watched their unpleasant divorce play out.
According to royal expert Angela Levin, the meeting finally came shortly before the boys arranged a surprise 50th birthday party for their father.
In her book Camilla: From Outcast to Queen Consort, Levin claimed that William and Harry knew Charles would have wanted Camilla at the bash, but felt it right to meet her privately beforehand, away from prying eyes.
William went first and a London meeting was set for June 12, 1998. Levin wrote: “William turned up unexpectedly early. Camilla offered to disappear, but her aide, Amanda MacManus, suggested it would be a good idea if they met earlier. William agreed.
“They talked for about half an hour and their meeting apparently went as well as could be hoped. The Prince was friendly and Camilla was sensitive enough to let the relationship progress at his pace and not ask difficult questions.”
A few weeks later William and Camilla met for another lunch. Then it became time for younger brother Harry to meet his step-mum. He is believed to have had a more strained relationship with Camilla, however their first meeting was said to be a success.
Despite Charles being serious about Camilla, his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, refused to meet her for a long time.
It wasn’t until 2000 when the late Queen accepted an invitation to King Constantine of Greece’s 60th birthday party, which was held at Charles’s residence, Highgrove, and where Camilla was also present.
But last year, in a message marking the 70th anniversary of her reign, she said it was her “sincere wish” that Camilla would be known as Britain’s Queen Consort when he son became King.
The late monarch wrote: “And when, in the fullness of time, my son Charles becomes King, I know you will give him and his wife Camilla the same support that you have given me; and it is my sincere wish that, when that time comes, Camilla will be known as Queen Consort as she continues her own loyal service.”
At Reach and across our entities we and our partners use information collected through cookies and other identifiers from your device to improve experience on our site, analyse how it is used and to show personalised advertising. You can opt out of the sale or sharing of your data, at any time clicking the “Do Not Sell or Share my Data” button at the bottom of the webpage. Please note that your preferences are browser specific. Use of our website and any of our services represents your acceptance of the use of cookies and consent to the practices described in our Privacy Notice and Cookie Notice.
