Charles and Camilla’s love affair came in three distinct stages; their friendship has been consistent. Among the young women with whom he became intimate at this time was Camilla Shand, a pretty country girl from the landed gentry who shared a love of the Goons. Cheeky and sharp-witted, she laughed with her eyes, which lit up with genuine warmth. Her father, World War II hero Major Bruce Shand, was a successful wine merchant and her mother, Rosalind, was a member of the Cubitt family. Her grandfather was Baron Ashcombe.
Charles’s old university friend, Lucia Santa Cruz, who lived above the then Camilla Shand’s apartment in London, had been keen to introduce her to Charles. He had been visiting Lucia in 1971 and she invited Camilla up for a drink, believing she and the prince would hit it off. It was there that Lucia made reference to the fact that Camilla’s great-grandmother, Alice Keppel, had once been a mistress of his great-great-grandfather, Edward VII, which amused them both. She said, ‘Now you two watch your genes,’ because of their ancestors’ adultery.
The prince had by then had several girlfriends, but his relationships with them were chaste, because of the need to leave women’s virginity intact for their eventual husbands. Instead, his sexual experience was to be gained with experienced women, preferably married. Lady Tryon, an Australian married to an English peer and nicknamed ‘Kanga’ by the prince, is one such lover, according to reports.
Charles had been concerned for some time about how he would find the right woman with whom to share his life and responsibilities. Whoever he married, after all, would be as much married to the institution of monarchy as to him. He had even alluded to it in his first television interview. In Camilla he saw a woman with the strengths needed to handle the job. She was not fazed by him or monarchy; she had the right social credentials; she was Church of England; and he had fallen for her. By late autumn of 1972 they had become inseparable.
There was a catch, however, in that, at that time, she didn’t feel the same as he did. While single and extremely fond of Charles, she had previously dated cavalry officer Andrew Parker Bowles, nine years her senior, since she was eighteen. She was, sadly for Charles, still captivated by the dashing officer. When Parker Bowles was posted to Germany in 1972, Camilla felt the relationship was over for good and was free to enjoy her liaison with Charles.
In the new year of 1973, Charles’s next navy posting was to prove fatal for the romance. In early December he had joined his new ship, the frigate HMS Minerva, and was to sail on her to the Caribbean in January. He would be gone for eight months. Camilla joined him on a tour of the ship before it sailed and they had lunch on board. She returned the following weekend. He bemoaned the fact that it would be ‘the last time I shall see her for eight months’. But it proved for him much worse than that. For Andrew Parker Bowles returned and the couple became engaged in March 1973. She jumped at the opportunity to wed the man she had been infatuated with for years.
Having changed ship to HMS Fox, Prince Charles moved on to Antigua where he was delighted by the English Harbour there, which had originally been Admiral Lord Nelson’s dockyard during the eighteenth-century wars with the French. It was here that news reached him of Camilla’s engagement to Andrew Parker Bowles. In May, he received a letter from his father informing him that his sister, Princess Anne, was to marry an army captain called Mark Phillips. It appeared to him that everything he held dear to him at home was being taken away.
Charles was devastated when he heard the news. He wrote to a friend that it seemed so cruel that fate should be this way. ‘Such a blissful, peaceful and mutually happy relationship…I suppose the feelings of emptiness will pass eventually.’ Charles and Camilla remained friends over the next seven years, and she became one of his most trusted confidantes.
When the Parker Bowleses’ first child, Tom, was born in 1974, Camilla asked the prince to be a godfather and he happily accepted. The intimacy between Charles and Camilla returned after the birth of Camilla’s daughter Laura, when her husband Andrew continued with his philandering ways. Camilla was drawn to the prince again and an adulterous affair ensued. She was not the first married woman to move in royal circles and have an affair, nor was she to be the last. Charles knew fully the dangers in conducting an affair with a married woman but was prepared to take the risk. He knew in time he must marry a woman who was suitable to be his queen consort. He was later to comment, ‘I’ve fallen in love with all sorts of girls and I fully intend to go on doing so, but I’ve made sure that I haven’t married the first person I’ve fallen in love with. I think one’s got to be aware of the fact that falling madly in love with someone is not necessarily the starting point to getting married. Marriage is basically a strong friendship, so I’d want to marry someone whose interests I could share.’
The watershed moment came for Charles on the so-called ‘Camilla question’, when he decided and announced that his relationship with her was ‘non-negotiable’. He laid down a marker in the late 1990s that sent a message not only to the general public but to the mandarins at the palace and to the Queen herself. He still felt aggrieved at the way his ‘darling Camilla’ was being treated but he made it abundantly clear he was not going to go along with it.
‘All my life people have been telling me what to do,’ he said when asked about his relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles in a 1998 interview with trusted journalist Gavin Hewitt. ‘I’m tired of it. My private life has become an industry. People are making money out of it. I just want some peace.’
When I broke the world-exclusive story of the royal engagement of the Prince of Wales and Camilla in the London Evening Standard – and, according to the prince’s biographer and friend Jonathan Dimbleby, ‘bounced’ Clarence House into issuing a formal announcement – the courtiers were ill-prepared. The wording of the statement that was released, long after the Evening Standard had broken the scoop, was simple enough. ‘It is with great pleasure that the marriage of HRH the Prince of Wales and Camilla Parker Bowles is announced. It will take place on Friday 8 April,’ the statement said.
My inside source had been right on the money and we were both elated and relieved. In the weeks that followed, the extent to which my scoop had caught Charles’s team off guard was woefully apparent. My story marked the start of a torrid time for Clarence House officials, whose grasp on the finer and legal points of this royal wedding was exposed as being tenuous at best – if not altogether incompetent.
It started well enough. The ring, £100,000 worth of platinum and diamonds, had been a gift from the Queen. It was a thirties Art Deco design, a central square-cut diamond with three smaller ones on either side, which had belonged to the Queen Mother and was one of her favourites. When asked how she felt, Camilla said she was just coming down to Earth. The Prime Minister sent congratulations on behalf of the government. The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh were ‘very happy’ and had given the couple their ‘warmest wishes’. The Archbishop of Canterbury was pleased, too, that they had taken ‘this important step’.
But soon critical newspaper headlines followed. The legality of the marriage was called into question; the impossibility of a church wedding turned Camilla into the House of Windsor’s first ‘town-hall bride’; and, for a while in the early spring of 2005, barely a day passed without the revelation of some apparent monumental oversight or error by Prince Charles’s team. While they struggled to control the situation, they were also forced to address one key question they might rather have ignored: What did William and Harry think about their father marrying the woman who ostensibly helped break up their mother’s marriage, a woman their mother loathed with a passion? William gave his blessing, saying that both he and Harry were ‘delighted’ at their father’s happiness. Privately, their mood was more of acceptance than undiluted joy at the prospect of having Camilla as a stepmother.
Charles, William and Harry faced down the press when it was put to their father in public at a prearranged photocall just seven weeks out from the wedding, when the boys enjoyed a sk
iing holiday with him in his favoured resort of Klosters, Switzerland. ‘How did he feel about the wedding?’ a TV reporter asked. Charles knew the question was coming, as it had all been cleared with his communications team – but the impertinence!
‘Your Royal Highnesses,’ began the seasoned broadcaster Nicholas Witchell, shouting from behind the barrier separating the royals from the media. ‘It’s eight days now to the wedding.’
‘You’ve heard of it, have you?’ Prince Charles interrupted, with a fake smile.
Caught a little off guard, Witchell, valiantly, continued, ‘Can I ask how you are feeling and how, in particular, princes William and Harry are feeling at the prospect of the wedding?’
‘Very happy,’ replied Prince William immediately. ‘It’ll be a good day.’
‘And Prince Charles, how are you feeling?’ continued Witchell after a second or two of silence.
‘It’s a very nice thought, isn’t it?’ said Prince Charles, eventually, without a smile, then added a little sarcastically, ‘I’m very glad you’ve heard of it, anyway.’
With that, he turned his head slightly away and, in a very quiet aside aimed solely at his sons, added, ‘Bloody people. I can’t bear that man. He’s so awful. He really is.’
With most of the journalists unaware of what exactly had been said, the questioning continued in good humour, with William telling the press pack he was looking forward to his role as witness at the wedding; ‘Very much so. As long as I don’t lose the rings, it will be all right,’ he joked.
Charles, who hadn’t seen the microphones in the snow before he had spoken so loosely, had been unaware that his curmudgeonly remarks were being picked up. It was a gaffe more befitting of his father, Prince Philip, than the usually media-savvy and careful Prince Charles.
It proved another low point in Charles’s relationship with the British tabloids and other media. During the collapse of his marriage to Diana he had grown to loathe the cynicism of the tabloids for the blatant commercialisation of his personal misery. ‘We must realise that certain sections of the media have now proved to their own satisfaction that sensationalised royal stories are one of the best ways of selling newspapers in a recession,’ he wrote in a memo to the Queen’s private secretary on 23 October 1992, just weeks before his separation from Diana. In the intervening years nothing had happened for him to change his damning opinion.
Eventually, the location for the wedding had to be changed to Windsor Guildhall – which meant neither the Queen nor Philip attended. They did turn out for the Service of Prayer and Dedication at St George’s Chapel, conducted by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Charles and Camilla used the wedding as an opportunity to earnestly repent the manifold sins and wickedness of their past deeds as each had been involved in the break-up of the other’s marriage.
The couple chose the sternest possible prayer of penitence from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer to be read by themselves and their guests at the blessing of their marriage. The prayer read, ‘We acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness, which we, from time to time, most grievously have committed, by thought, word and deed, against thy Divine Majesty, provoking most justly thy wrath and indignation against us. We do earnestly repent, and are heartily sorry for these misdoings.’ The ceremony date was also changed to 9 April to allow Charles to attend the funeral of Pope John Paul II, the third-longest-serving pontiff in history, who had died aged eighty-four in Rome.
However, as far as the palace were concerned – and Charles too – the marriage was a triumph. Camilla’s deeply respected father, Major Bruce Shand, aged eighty-eight at this time and ailing, stalled going to the doctor until after the wedding. He knew something was very wrong but was desperate to see his daughter, so often maligned, remarried. It mattered a great deal to him that Charles should do the right thing by her. When he finally sought medical help, four days later, he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer – and died fourteen months later.
Charles gave a touching speech at the reception, hosted by the Queen, in which he thanked ‘my dear mama’ for footing the bill and ‘my darling Camilla, who has stood with me through thick and thin and whose precious optimism and humour have seen me through’. The duchess, looking serene, a vision, in an Anna Valentine dress with a golden headpiece by milliner Philip Treacy, emerged triumphant. It was the Queen, however, who had the last word.
Her Majesty compared the happy couple’s relationship to the Grand National, which showed Camilla was accepted and she had finally got her man. She began by saying she had two important announcements to make. The first was that Hedgehunter had won the race at Aintree; the second was that, at Windsor, she was delighted to be welcoming her son and his bride to the ‘winners’ enclosure’. ‘They have overcome Becher’s Brook and the Chair and all kinds of other terrible obstacles. They have come through and I’m very proud and wish them well. My son is home and dry with the woman he loves.’
Many cheered, others were close to tears. For the prince, that day brought an end to his long life of loneliness. His soulmate was at long last at his side. They still had a long way to go to win over the people, but, as far as the palace and the prince were concerned, this marriage was the beginning of the end of the Camila question that had dogged the heir to the throne throughout his adult life.
When I revealed the couple’s plans to marry, my inside source had been adamant that other key areas such as titles had been discussed well in advance of going public. The source said that Charles categorically intended his wife to be his queen consort when he became king: ‘There was no doubt in his mind at the time about that and I honestly don’t think anything has charged. In fact, I think he has hardened his resolve that this must be the case. For there to be any other outcome would, in his view, be to lessen his role as king. His marriage to Camilla is legal. She happens to be his second wife. That is it. Did any of Henry VIII’s wives not get the title?’
Clarence House has inspired speculation about the duchess and her future role. Charles’s office had always insisted that the duchess would be styled ‘Princess Consort’ when the time comes, indicating that she would eschew the title of ‘Queen Consort’ normally expected for the wife of a king. The decision, announced in 2005 before the wedding, has not officially changed since then, even as the public attitude to the marriage has softened. A redesign of the couple’s official website has seen the explicit statement about this role quietly removed, leading to reports that she could be given the title of ‘Queen’ when the Prince of Wales accedes to the throne.
This book’s exclusive insider source of the story had been spot on, too, that Camilla, when married, would not take the title HRH the Princess of Wales, even though it was her right to do so, as it would be insensitive and cause undue hostility with Diana, Princess of Wales, in mind. She uses the title HRH the Duchess of Cornwall instead, as the prince was Duke of Cornwall, which does not reduce her royal rank. It is a title of convenience.
When they wed, Clarence House issued what it described as a clarification of sorts with regard to the future title of Camilla. The official wedding announcement said, ‘It is intended that Mrs Parker Bowles should use the title HRH the Princess Consort when the Prince of Wales accedes to the throne.’ The big word in this statement was of course ‘intended’. What Clarence House was in fact doing was buying time, time for a hostile public to warm to Camilla.
Since then Camilla, through hard work and the fact that time heals, has cemented her place in the Royal Family in recent years. The monarch marked her official ninetieth birthday by tidying up plans for her death and elevating the duchess to her most senior advisory body, the Privy Council. It was, as ever, all done very quietly. But it is unprecedented in modern times for a royal wife not in direct line to the throne to be a member of the Privy Council – the cornerstone of the constitutional monarchy, enacting Acts of Parliament and advising the sovereign on the use of powers that do not formally go through Parliament. It also showed the esteem in which the
Queen holds Camilla, and reflects the Royal Household’s efforts to prepare the public for succession.
The main reason the Queen wanted Camilla and William included was so they can be part of the Accession Council, which handles the succession to the throne after her death. The Queen wanted Camilla to be beside Charles when he formally succeeds her as monarch in a ceremony normally held at St James’s Palace within twenty-four hours of the death of a sovereign.
Ever since the Prince of Wales married the Duchess of Cornwall in April 2005, the Royal Family have sought to avoid at great lengths any public uprising over the prospect of ‘Queen Camilla’. Courtiers decided to play the long game. To a certain extent it has worked, but opinion polls still show the idea of a ‘Queen Camilla’ remains unpopular.
As he prepared to celebrate his seventieth birthday, I understand, Charles, like every Prince of Wales before him, was determined that his wife would also be his queen. Those private thoughts have only once been expressed publicly, when the prince indicated that the Duchess of Cornwall could become Queen Camilla when he ascends to the throne. Until then, the prince had always stuck to the line that his wife will be known as ‘Princess Consort’. But, in an interview with NBC News in 2010, Charles had hinted that the duchess ‘could be’ given the title of ‘Queen’.
I am told that Camilla will be named ‘Queen Consort’ on Charles’s ascension. In reality, there would need to be an Act of Parliament to stop this from happening, not only in the UK but also in all the other realms in the Commonwealth. According to precedent, the wives of ruling kings become queen consorts but the husbands of sovereign queens do not have the right to a title.
Charles at Seventy Page 17