King Charles and Queen Camilla are set to celebrate 20 years of marriage next week but the pair’s history dates back more than 50 years – with Camilla believed to have made a very cheeky comment to the now-monarch when she first met him
Our King and Queen might be celebrating their 20th wedding anniversary next week, but their love story stretches back more than five decades, taking in more twists and turns than a Hollywood whodunnit. King Charles – then the Prince of Wales – was 21 when he first met Camilla Shand, then 23, in 1970, after being introduced by mutual friend Lucia Santa Cruz at a polo match in Windsor Great Park.
But it wasn’t just a mutual love of sport that sparked a connection – the Prince was apparently bowled over instantly by Camilla’s confidence, quick wit and “smiling eyes”. “My great-grandmother was the mistress of your great-great-grandfather [King Edward VII]. I feel we have something in common,” she is rumoured to have quipped at that very first meeting.
Writing in her book The Duchess: The Untold Story, royal author Penny Junor said: “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.
“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 soon started dating, but their love story was repeatedly derailed by Charles’s naval career, which took him overseas for several months at a time. The pair split in 1971 and by the time Charles returned from an eight-month tour with the Royal Navy in 1973, the one-time object of his affections had become engaged to Andrew Parker Bowles, an army captain who, in an awkward twist, had previously dated Charles’s sister, Princess Anne.
“Andrew Parker Bowles was much more dashing, a very charming character and a cavalry officer. He knew when to strike and Camilla was in love with him,” says royal historian Hugo Vickers. “The Prince of Wales got the news at sea and entered a sort of depression, almost a sulk, which lasted until 2005, you could say – almost until he ‘got her’.”
Andrew and Camilla married in July 1973 and went on to have two children, Tom and Laura, while Charles married 20-year-old Lady Diana Spencer at St Paul’s Cathedral in July 1981 – watched on by Camilla, who was among the 3,500 special guests.
As history would prove, Charles and Diana were hopelessly mismatched. Their marriage was beset by problems from the start, the studious prince reportedly spent hours reading and painting as he and his new bride endured a rather awkward, passion-free honeymoon.
“The early years were very difficult,” admits royal author Katie Nicholl. “Charles had clearly never fallen out of love with Camilla Parker Bowles, a relationship that started when he was a single man and Camilla was also single. But she wasn’t the virgin bride that she needed to be, so their love affair had to be extinguished before it ever really had a chance to catch light.”
While honeymooning, a row even erupted after Charles wore cufflinks featuring, according to Diana, “two Cs entwined, like the Chanel ‘C’.” They were, she said, a gift from Camilla.
Five years later, in 1986, the Prince and Camilla secretly rekindled their romance, leading to Diana’s famous quote that “there were three of us in the marriage”.
“The worst day of my life was realising that Charles had gone back to Camilla,” she told author Andrew Morton, whose 1992 biography, Diana: Her True Story, shook the monarchy to its foundations. The princess, who collaborated with Morton via a third party, even revealed how, in 1989, she rounded on Camilla at a party, saying, “I know what’s going on between you and Charles and I just want you to know that.”
Further damage was done, in early 1993, when an explicit phone conversation between Charles and Camilla – dubbed ‘Camillagate’ – was leaked, causing widespread embarrassment. Suddenly, Camilla was public enemy number one, accused of destroying a “fairy tale” marriage, which, in reality, had been more of a horror story.
“Charles claimed in his interview with Jonathan Dimbleby that the affair only started once his marriage to Diana had irretrievably broken down. Well, Diana didn’t believe that was the case and neither did much of the public,” says Katie. “Most people believed that Camilla never really went away. This was an extra-marital affair.”
The late Queen Elizabeth was also furious at Camilla’s involvement in the collapse of her heir’s marriage, allegedly branding her “that wicked woman”.
And just when things couldn’t get any worse for Camilla, whose divorce from Andrew Parker Bowles was finalised in 1995, a year before Charles’s, Princess Diana was tragically killed in a Paris car crash. Any hopes of her being accepted by the public went up in smoke as the world wept over the passing of The People’s Princess.
“There was a very ambitious campaign by the Palace to introduce [Camilla] to public life, but it almost felt like they were jinxed,” Katie continues. “Just as that campaign was coming to fruition, just as she was about to be brought out, Diana died. So the whole thing was scrapped and they went back to square one. It took years before that plan could even be entertained again.”
It was another two years before Charles and Camilla made their first public appearance as a couple, on 29 January 1999, at the 50th birthday party of Camilla’s sister, Annabel Elliot. Despite arriving separately at the bash at London’s Ritz hotel, the pair emerged later that evening side by side, greeted by a blizzard of paparazzi flashbulbs. They were, officially, a couple.
“Diana’s death had such a huge impact on the world that it needed to be a minimum of two years before Charles was ever going to be able to entertain the slightest chance of people accepting him and Camilla,” says Katie. “But I think, by that point, he was in a place where she was a non-negotiable, and where he wasn’t willing to not be with the woman he loved. It was another major, major hurdle to overcome.
“Many others would have just given up. Many others would have thought, ‘The odds are stacked against us. It’s actually just too much. But never once did they give up. So that’s why it really is the ultimate love story – a story of romance and resilience and deep, unwavering love for one another at the cost of anything and everything.”