From mistress to monarchy, Camilla’s journey complete

Queen Camilla. The notion would once have caused a near-rebellion in Britain.

Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles in 1975. Picture: Shutterstock

Queen Camilla. The notion would once have caused a near-rebellion in Britain. Unthinkable, they would have said. A home-wrecker. The third person, the ­villain in the failed fantasy of Prince Charles and Lady Diana. And yet here she is, a generation after Diana’s death, being crowned in Westminster Abbey, not just as queen consort but as queen.

The rise and rise of Camilla is the most improbable royal story of this coronation.

It is a story of an immaculate 25-year public relations campaign sprinkled with a dash of luck and led by a woman who bided her time and presented such a moderate face to the British people that they finally warmed to her.

On one level, the coronation was the logical conclusion to what has been for Charles and Camilla a genuine love story spanning most of their lives and across both of their previous marriages.

Charles and Camilla in 1979. Picture: Getty Images

On the other hand, their historic coronation in Westminster once seemed so improbable as to be laughable. It was opposed by law, by the queen and by the British people.

So what happened? Their lives were entwined on and off from an early age. Camilla was born into ­England’s upper class, her father a war hero and an up-market wine merchant in Mayfair, and her mother a well-known socialite. Her great-grandmother had been the long-term mistress of King Edward VII.

Camilla, then known as Camilla Shand, had been to the elite Queen’s Gate School in South Kensington and a Swiss finishing school. So it was not surprising that she would attend polo games, where at the age of 25 she first met the prince. At that first meeting, she joked to Charles that “my great-grandmother was the mistress of your great-great-grandfather. I feel we have something in common.”

Not long after, they became lovers, and Charles ­appeared relaxed and happy in her company. But she was not the perfect royal partner. She had been with other men, which at that time was frowned upon for a potential wife of a future king. Her bloodlines were very good, but she was not considered to be from royal stock.

In any case, Camilla fell ­for another man.

She ­became captivated by Andrew Parker Bowles, a dashing cavalry officer and horseman. Charles was serving in the navy and away in the West Indies when Camilla announced her engagement.

Charles was ­re­port­edly devastated.

The couple in 2012. Picture: Getty Images

And yet in the late 1970s, as Charles was searching for a wife and Camilla was with Parker Bowles, the two had such obvious mutual affection for each other that some believed they were lovers even at that stage.

When Charles married Diana Spencer, it didn’t take long for Diana to become suspicious of Camilla’s place in her husband’s heart. Diana called her the “rottweiler”. After their marriage had unravelled, Diana famously said in an interview “There were three of us in this marriage; it was a bit crowded”.

Diana admitted the day she realised Charles had gone back to Camilla, while they were still married, was “the worst day of my life”. Charles and Diana ­separated in 1992 and Camilla divorced Parker Bowles in 1995.

Charles was with Camilla, but she was now argu­ably the most hated woman in Britain, with many seeing her as the home-wrecker who came between Charles and the much-loved Diana.

Diana’s death in a car crash in 1997, and the huge outpouring of grief that followed, further delayed Camilla’s public debut as Charles’s official partner.

Though she met in private with the young princes William and Harry, she did not publicly step out with Charles until 1999 when photographers were tipped off by Charles’s PR team about his attendance at a birthday party in London. About 200 of them snapped photos of the couple that went around the world.

By that stage, Charles had hired private secretary Mark Bolland, who helped mastermind Camilla’s slow public rehabilitation. In 2000, the Queen, who had been hostile to Camilla, finally agreed to meet her. And in 2002, the Church of England amended its rules to allow divorced spouses to marry in the Anglican Church, making any potential marriage between Charles and Camilla legal.

The couple moved in together in 2003 and married in 2005. Camilla shrewdly avoided taking Diana’s old title, the Princess of Wales, preferring to be known as the Duchess of Cornwall.

Camilla began to slowly thaw her public image through low-profile appearances in which she portrayed a cheeky, funny side beyond the usual stiffness of the royals.

Prince Harry has revealed in his memoir Spare that all was not good behind closed doors and that he and Prince William begged Charles not to marry Camilla, though they did not oppose his relationship with her. Harry believed Camilla was so intent on rehabilitating her image – and that of Charles – that she was willing to throw other members of the royal ­family under the bus.

Charles and Camilla in 2019. Picture: Getty Images

In an interview this year, Harry said Camilla was dangerous “because of the need for her to rehabilitate her image. That made her dangerous because of the connections that she was forging in the British press. And there was open willingness on both sides to trade information. And with a family built on hierarchy and with her on the way to being queen consort, there were going to be people or bodies left in the street ­because of that.”

Harry’s comments are said to have deeply hurt Camilla, but she and Charles have refused to respond to them.

And yet Camilla has slowly but surely won over the British public with her understated style, never seeking the spotlight, but also being at ease when talking to dignitaries and with the public.

She can also laugh at herself.

I watched her up close in Cardiff, Wales, shortly after the queen’s death, as she walked along the cordon of mourners, stopping numerous times to make small talk with those in the crowd. She appeared ­relaxed and fully accepting of her royal duties.

Several of those who talked to her spoke glowingly of her. During the mourning period for the queen, Camilla was a constant at Charles’s side. Those watching got a small taste of her “no-fuss” attitude when she dismissed a mini-hissy fit by Charles over a leaking ink pen when he was signing a document by just grabbing his pen and getting on with it.

Despite this, Camilla’s journey of rehabilitation has been a slow one. On the 20th anniversary of Diana’s death, six years ago, just 14 per cent of Britons supported her becoming their queen. It was not until 2022 that Charles and Camilla received their biggest break, when Queen Elizabeth, during her platinum ­jubilee celebration, released a letter saying it was her “sincere wish” that when Charles became king, Camilla would be known as queen consort.

The “promotion” for Camilla was a sign that she had finally been fully accepted by the royal family. This year, Charles, as king, went one step further and dropped the word consort, declaring that Camilla would simply be known as the queen. At the coronation, Camilla’s family will be seated alongside the senior royals.

When she recently celebrated her 75th birthday, Camilla explained she had adopted her low-key ­mantra for life from Prince Phillip.

“The Duke of Edinburgh’s philosophy was clear,” she said at her birthday lunch. “Look up and look out, say less, do more – and get on with the job. And that is just what I intend to do.

“Both he and Her Majesty have always been the very touchstone of what it truly means to ‘get on with the job’, and an inspiration to each one of us here to do the same, whatever our age.”

Once derided as a home-wrecker, a scarlet woman, her remarkable two-decades-long rehabilitation in the eyes of the royal family and the British public is now complete. She is not loved, but she is no longer widely hated. And she is now the Queen of England.