Duchess Camilla ‘felt sympathy’ for late Princess Diana

CAMILLA, Duchess of Cornwall, sympathised with Princess Diana as she struggled to cope with Prince Charles’s strict routine, a new book has claimed.

Royal biographer Tina Brown claims that usually “upbeat” Camilla found life within the British Royal Family difficult after she married Charles in 2005.

In an extract published from her book The Palace Papers: Inside the House of Windsor – The Truth and Turmoil in The Daily Telegraph newspaper, Brown wrote: “The ambivalence of her position was becoming untenable. For a while, she had thought there was an upside to not being Charles’s wife.

“She had always hated flying, speaking in public, dressing up and getting press attention. She had never had a calendar filled with things she didn’t want to do, which essentially defines the royal way of life.”

The book makes claims that Camilla struggled to deal with the regimented way that Charles ran his life and his expectation that she should do the same.

Brown writes: “The prince’s routine was relentless.

“Punctuality had never been Camilla’s strong suit, but Charles expected her to be ready for engagements at his own regimented pace.

When she asked where they were going, he would snap: ‘Haven’t you read the brief?’”

Brown suggests that Camilla began to feel sympathy for the late Diana, the prince’s late first wife, who also complained about the time constraints placed on her when she became a member of the royal family after marrying the heir to the British throne – the son of Queen Elizabeth II – in 1981.