Queen Camilla‘s something to behold, holding the fort with other royals out of action
With King Charles out of action, his once unpopular partner has been drawing in the fans.
It is just a short, downhill stroll from the Ritz to Buckingham Palace. For the Queen, however, it has been an uphill climb that has taken a good quarter of a century.
Last week marked the 25th anniversary of Operation Ritz, when the King and Queen were first photographed together as a couple outside the London hotel. It was also the week in which Camilla took centre stage as the most prominent member of the royal family.
While the King recovers from a three-night hospital stay to treat a benign enlarged prostate, Camilla has ploughed on with her diary commitments as planned. The media spotlight that might otherwise have been directed on to the King or the Prince and Princess of Wales has, for the time being at least, been shifted.
As Kate recuperates from abdominal surgery, Kensington Palace has said that she will not return to royal duties before Easter. Prince William has also said he will ensure her care is settled before returning to full-time duty. Along with the stalwart Princess Royal, it has been Camilla holding the fort.
For any of the Palace aides who have helped to improve the image of Camilla, 76, in the public consciousness, it must have been something to behold. She met great titans of literature at Windsor Castle on Tuesday, standing before authors to deliver an off-the-cuff speech. On Wednesday she was at a cancer care centre at the Royal Free Hospital in London. In Bath on Thursday she was greeted by scores of flag-waving schoolchildren.
And in Cambridge on Friday – and with a distinct twinkle in her eye – she accepted the offer of a private dance lesson from the Strictly dancer Johannes Radebe, telling him: “I will be there. I’ll come. Definitely.” Camilla even suggested she might take up tap dancing in her seventies. “I’d love to do it because I have always wanted to tap dance,” she said. “In my dotage it’s perhaps something I could take up.”
Given the way she was behaving, the idea of the Queen tap dancing seemed perfectly plausible. While meeting a Love Island star she let slip that while she didn’t watch the show, her children – the food writer Tom Parker Bowles, 49, and Laura Lopes, 46 - did. Thanks, Mum.
When wellwishers inquired about the King’s health during the week, she gave polite reassurances that he was “doing well” and getting on with his recovery. The greatest message of reassurance, however, came from her jolly demeanour. Crowds turned out to greet her, she spoke about how patients could now “chill” at a new cancer care centre she opened in London, and a photograph of her merely getting out of a car made it onto the front page of a national newspaper.
A Palace source said: “It has been nice to see people taking more of an interest in the work that Her Majesty has been doing for years. She is hardworking, makes trips to all lengths of the country and if you think where she was two decades ago there has been a transformation in terms of public opinion. This week there has been such positivity everywhere she went.”
That public opinion hasn’t always been quite so glowing. For some, she fulfilled the pantomime villain role of “the other woman”. Diana’s own testimony that there were “three people” in her marriage would do untold damage for years. After Diana’s death Camilla continued to be pilloried. There was even a report, which later proved to be untrue, that bread rolls had been thrown at her outside a supermarket. It was open season.
Aides, however, began to fear that by keeping the relationship away from the public eye - attending the same events but arriving and departing separately - they started to look disingenuous.
Having won staff over with what they saw as her inherently cheerful attitude, they felt that she would one day do the same with the public. One insider said that what may in 2024 be referred to as “being your authentic self” was always true for Camilla. She was “a mustn’t grumble type of person” who gave the impression that “you were getting the same person in the palace as the one who kicked off her shoes at home”.
Eventually, it was felt that there had been a respectable enough gap to allow the country to move on. Campaign Camilla was already under way, with Camilla building up her work with the National Osteoporosis Society, the condition suffered by her mother. Mark Bolland, the PR executive hired as an assistant private secretary to Charles in 1996, started to introduce Camilla to newspaper editors and others seen to be influential when it came to public opinion.
It was all building towards that moment at the Ritz. Photographers were told that the royal couple would be pictured leaving the Ritz together after the 50th birthday party of Camilla’s sister, Annabel Elliot. Some well-timed choreography signified, finally, that their longstanding relationship was official. Photographers lined up at the allotted exit and, as promised, Charles and Camilla walked out into a barrage of camera flashes.
Later, when footage emerged of the picture opportunity, the British Epilepsy Association asked broadcasters not to use it for fear of triggering seizures. Yet the pictures alone were enough to create a storm.
“Meet the mistress,” said The Sun’s headline above a picture from the Ritz, which filled the front page. A strip of text at the bottom read: “At last they go public.” The Times ran with, “Facing the world together at last: Prince and Camilla come out of hiding.” It was the start of what would become one of the longest and most successful rebranding exercises in marketing history.
Back then, they faced the world together. Twenty-five years later, the PR coup has enabled Camilla to face the world alone while so many members of the royal family are off duty.
The interim period has been a slow burn. Deliberately so. Taking on causes such as domestic violence, rape and sexual abuse have helped to cement her as a caring and empathetic royal who supports other women. It helped, too, that she had the wholehearted blessing of her mother-in-law.
When Charles and Camilla married in 2005, Queen Elizabeth used an analogy from her love of racing, saying: “They have come through and I’m very proud and wish them well. My son is home and dry with the woman that he loves. They are now on the home straight; the happy couple are now in the winner’s enclosure.”
There was one question in the run-up to the wedding that Diana’s biographer Andrew Morton described as “the elephant in the room": could Camilla ever be called Queen? A statement from Clarence House in 2005 ended the speculation by stating: “It is intended that Mrs Parker Bowles should use the title HRH the Princess Consort when the Prince of Wales accedes to the throne.”
Years later, this would be overturned. A statement released by Queen Elizabeth on the 70th anniversary of her accession to the throne said: “It is my sincere wish that, when the time comes, Camilla will be known as Queen Consort as she continues her own loyal service.”
In the days before the coronation, the word consort was dropped in common usage, in line with previous consorts. Even the name Camilla is rarely required. History will remember her as Queen, rather than the “other woman”.
The Times
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