The incredible untold story of the real Camilla
STILL OVERSHADOWED BY DIANA,
She was once Public Enemy No1, but the world moves on and these days, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, is a royal to be seen in a very different light. Twelve years into her marriage to Prince Charles she has become the loved one – devoted to her husband, devoted to a job she never wanted, devoted to making people feel at ease with her being by Charles’s side.
Surviving on humour and courage, she has slowly become a vital cog in the royal machine. Name one other person in the royal firm who would jokingly dub a complaining farmer with a knighthood using a leek as she did this month.
But despite all this, Camilla once again stands on the brink – haunted by shadows of the past, anxiously waiting to be assailed on all sides.
She will be 70 next month, but it could not be a more unsettling time for her. Bizarrely, the problem starts within the Royal Family.
It seems not a day goes by without Prince William or Harry mentioning Diana’s name.
We have already seen the opening of a Diana memorial garden at Kensington Palace. Quite soon, a statue to her will be unveiled. Two separate TV documentaries featuring the princes recalling their mother will be screened. And there has been a raft of interviews by the two brothers where their mother’s name is constantly on their lips.
Yesterday, Prince Harry added to the growing noise, saying he once wanted to get out of being a royal. He talked about the “chaos” of his life and how near he was to a breakdown.
The death of his mother was the reason – but behind that, was there a barely hidden implication Camilla was somehow to blame?
Now a new biography of Camilla has re-ignited the interest in the Diana-Charles-Camilla triangle – at a time that could not be worse for Camilla.
In it, writer Penny Junor returns to the origins of Charles and Camilla’s affair, which pre-dated the arrival on the scene in 1980 of the 19-yearold Lady Diana Spencer.
She describes how a besotted Charles begged Camilla not to marry Andrew Parker Bowles, her husband from 1973 to 1995, and how Camilla’s letter telling Charles about the wedding prior to her nuptials “broke the prince’s heart”.
At the time, in March 1973, the prince was in the West Indies. Very upset, she says he wrote letters to his friends, saying in one that it was particularly cruel that after “such a blissful, peaceful and mutually happy relationship” it should come to an end. Sadly, he added: “I suppose the feeling of emptiness will pass eventually.” Reportedly, in the week before the wedding, he even wrote trying to convince Camilla not to go ahead with the marriage. The book describes how Camilla “lived in fear”. The womanising Parker Bowles left her “with a permanent knot of dread in her tummy” because she loved him so much and believed he would leave her. Parker Bowles had even once dated Princess Anne. During the relationship, the Queen invited him to join the royals at Windsor Castle for Ascot week – but both sides knew they could never marry. Charles and Camilla rekindled their relationship later in Camilla’s marriage – but by then it was decided Charles should marry, and Diana was chosen. Ms Junor claims Charles looked from his palace window, tears rolling down his cheeks, as the crowds in The Mall awaited his marriage to Diana. Adding to Camilla’s discomfort also comes the revelation that – because of Charles’s passion for her – Diana angrily ripped apart Charles’s paintings during their honeymoon and she subjected a courtier to a six-hour ordeal by crying, kicking furniture and ranting about everyone.
Ms Junor also reveals that two friends persuaded Camilla to “go back to Charles” to preserve his sanity – even though both parties were married to someone else at the time.
And she reveals the reason why they never married in the first place was because Camilla was not a virgin and not aristocratic enough.
But while Ms Junor claims to have had the help of Charles, Camilla, and their friends in compiling her new biography, very little thought can have been given to it being published at this crucial moment.
When Prince Charles stepped up to the mark at the State Opening of Parliament in the absence of his hospitalised father Prince Philip last week, it was a reminder that, before long, he will be in the driving seat, either as Regent or as King. By law, Camilla will become queen – though whether or not she will use the title we
still do not know. Yet today her life stands on a knife-edge. All the good works over the past dozen years – and there have been many – stand to be overshadowed by the outpourings of Prince William and Prince Harry, and by this well-intentioned, but poorly timed, book. Friends know she can withstand the pressure, but fear her peace of mind and the deal she has struck with herself to be the best support she can be to the future king, could be damaged by this two-pronged attack. William and Harry learned long ago what a word from them can generate in headlines. But initial sympathy, as they opened up this ummer about the loss of their mother, has started turning to impatience as they continue to bang the drum. And Ms Junor, who has previously written a biography of Charles, hardly adds anything to the Duchess’s peace of mind by discussing such matters as whether Charles was passed on to Camilla by a Chilean diplomat’s daughter to whom he had – or hadn’t, depending on who you want to believe – lost his virginity. All this can add nothing to Camilla’s popularity, but do a great deal to damage it. It is important to remember Camilla has already been married to Charles for longer than Diana was. More than a year ago, her 12-year union surpassed the 11 years the Prince and Princess of Wales were together.
Unlike Diana, Camilla has done nothing, since her marriage, to undermine her husband or the institution she married into.
And, in this writer’s view, Camilla will make a far greater queen – with or without the title – than Diana could ever have done. She has never drawn attention to herself, never tried to upstage her husband, never criticised the Royal Family or the way it goes about things.
Alas for Camilla, it is her misfortune that she has grown older, while Diana is forever young.
All these revelations were half-a-lifetime ago, and perhaps we should now judge Camilla by her works and deeds without forever hauling out the skeletons in her closet.
Before her death Diana had accepted Camilla was the love of Charles’s life. However hard it may be, perhaps William and Harry should, too.
Christopher Wilson is the author of A Greater Love: Charles and Camilla, and, with former Mirror writer James Whitaker, Diana v. Charles.