Royal watcher says she was injured party
PRINCE CHARLES and Lady Diana’s romance was a grim fairy tale — right down to the wicked witch.
The twist in royal biographer Penny Junor’s new book: This witch was a designer-clad, beautiful and blond young princess.
In “The Duchess: Camilla Parker Bowles and the Love Affair That Rocked the Crown,” royal biographer Junor argues it wasn’t the prince’s pretty wife but the other woman who became the real injured party in this love triangle.
According to Junor, Parker Bowles didn't destroy the royal marriage — and she may have saved the monarchy.
It’s definitely a contrarian opinion. More than 20 years after her death, Diana has practically been sainted.
Yet, Junor insists, the People’s Princess was never as innocent as she appeared. Not only did Camilla date Charles first, she loved him more.
It was the summer of 1971 when mutual friend Lucia Santa Cruz introduced the two twentysomethings, warning them to be careful.
“You’ve got genetic antecedents,” she teased. Camilla’s great-grandmother was the mistress of Charles’ great-greatgrandfather Edward VII.
Camilla, then Camilla Shand, already had a serious boyfriend, Andrew Parker Bowles, a dashing military officer.
He proved perpetually unfaithful, and she grew sick of his escapades. One night, seeing his car parked outside another woman’s house, Camilla let the air out of his tires.
A flirtation with a prince sounded like a great way to get even.
Except the fling turned serious. Charles enjoyed her sense of humor and she shared his love of country life. They were well-matched and happy.
All was well until Lord Mountbatten, Charles’s beloved greatuncle, warned him to end the romance. Only a virgin, preferably an aristocrat, could become the wife of a future king.
Charles dutifully broke off the romance. Camilla married Parker Bowles. And the Prince of Wales resumed the hunt for a suitable mate.
He finally seemed to find her in Lady Diana Spencer. They had first met when she was a schoolgirl and Charles was dating her eldest sister.
Now, in 1980, he saw a happygo-lucky 19-year-old who loved laughter and children. And she saw a prince, the hero in all those paperback romances she constantly read.
Things started going wrong as soon as the engagement was announced — and in ways the process would repeat throughout their troubled marriage.
The perpetually clueless Charles decided it would be a nice thing to do — now that he was no longer an eligible bachelor — to quietly send all his old girlfriends little notes and gifts of jewelry.
The forever-insecure Diana took that as proof that he was still in love with them.
She flew into a rage. He told her she was being silly.
Diana was deeply pained by her own parents’ divorce, and now she began to fret. The night before her wedding, she was “sick as a parrot,” reports Junor.
Her bulimia was still a carefully kept secret.
The princess-to-be told her sisters she had cold feet. They laughed and pointed out the country was already buying wedding souvenirs. So Diana said, “I do.”
The ceremony was an international sensation; the honeymoon, not so much. The couple had agreed on a Mediterranean cruise, but that was all they agreed on.
Diana expected bodice-ripping passion. Charles looked forward to two quiet weeks of books and watercolors.
All went badly. One day when he wasn't looking, she ripped up his pictures. Then matters got worse. One evening, she noticed his cuff links had two interlocking C’s — a gift from Camilla. The next day he dropped his diary, and Camilla’s picture fell out.
“Boy, did we have a row,” Diana confessed later.
The rows only continued. Although publicly she was Diana, Princess of Wales, composed and elegant, privately, she was different.
She screamed at her husband, kicked the furniture and threw objects at him.
Charles tried to appease her. She didn’t like his friends? He dropped them. She didn’t like his dog? He gave away a Lab he had for years. Eventually, he simply stayed away.
His distance only strained the relationship. Her moods darkened and her bulimia raged. She lost so much weight that her wedding ring fell off. Charles grew so moody, his friends feared he was having a nervous breakdown.
In 1986, they reached out to