CAMILLA SHOULDN’T BE QUEEN, SAY PUBLIC

And four in ten say William must be the next king

A MAJORITY of the public does not want Camilla to become queen if Prince Charles succeeds to the throne, a poll for the Daily Mail reveals today. And the nation is completely split on whether Charles should become king at all.

Only 43 per cent believe he should ascend to the throne compared with an almost identical number saying he should stand aside in favour of his elder son Prince William.

William and Prince Harry are the most popular members of the Royal Family, closely followed by the Queen and the Duchess of Cambridge. Prince Andrew languishes at the bottom of the

popularity table, with his brother Edward not far ahead. Camilla and Andrew are the only two royals who are more disliked than liked, according to the poll.

Despite courtiers’ efforts to have Camilla accepted into the nation’s hearts, 55 per cent are against the Duchess of Cornwall becoming queen when her husband becomes king.

This is down from 73 per cent opposition at the time of her wedding to Charles in April 2005, but shows she has yet to win over most of the country.

However, she is no longer regarded as the main culprit for the break-up of Charles’s marriage to Princess Diana. The prince himself is held most to blame by 39 per cent, followed by Diana on 13 per cent and Camilla on 12 per cent.

There is still great affection for Diana, who died in a Paris car crash 18 years ago, with a substantial majority saying she would have made a better queen than Camilla.

Intriguingly, the younger generation is most attached to her even though many of them were not old enough to remember her when she was alive. Among 18 to 24-year-olds, two out of three would have preferred Diana to be queen, while only 3 per cent backed Camilla.

Charles’s wedding to Camilla divided the country at the time, and ten years on people remain uncertain about its wider significance for the Royal Family. Fifteen per cent said the marriage had strengthened the monarchy but 24 per cent believed it had weakened it; just over half felt it had no impact.

Camilla, 67, was once reviled as the woman whose love affair with Charles, 66, destroyed his relationship with Diana, who was 36 when she died in 1997.

Senior officials at Clarence House have nurtured the duchess’s image with carefully chosen public appearances. She has won widespread praise for her charity work, dedication to attending royal functions around the country and emergence as a style icon for older women.

The Duchess of Cornwall is patron or president of 85 charities, and has undertaken nearly 1,700 royal engagements in Britain and more than 600 abroad since 2005.

Yet the survey reveals how Camilla’s past continues to affect how she is perceived. Just over a third said they had grown to like her more over the past decade, and nearly two-thirds thought Charles was happier with her than he ever was with Diana.

But only a quarter felt the Duchess of Cornwall had been a good influence on the Royal Family, and a similar proportion argued that her marriage to the prince had ‘stained’ the royals’ reputation.

Four in ten say Charles should give up his right to be king so the crown passes straight to William.

Among those aged 18 to 24, that figure rises to 53 per cent.

But overall 43 per cent of the public back Charles to take over from his mother, with a clear majority of over-55s wanting him as the next monarch.

Support for the monarchy itself remains very high, with the 88- year- old Queen and the younger royals – William, Harry and Kate – hugely popular.

By contrast, Prince Andrew was least popular, with only 30 per cent liking him. Charles, Prince Philip and Princess Anne were ranked in the middle.

Only 19 per cent would back turning Britain into a republic, although the figure rises to 36 per cent in Scotland, perhaps a by-product of the SNP’s unsuccessful independence campaign last year.

Charles, who is said to favour a ‘slimmed down’ monarchy, will be buoyed by the finding that 56 per believe that the royals should be reduced to the Queen’s immediate family only.

By law Camilla will automatically become Queen Consort when Charles is king, but privately officials continue to debate whether she should use a lesser title to avoid controversy.

The official position has been that she intends to be known as Princess Consort, but in recent years Camilla and Charles have dropped a number of hints that they would like her to be queen.

Asked in 2010 whether his wife would take the title, Charles replied: ‘We’ll see, won’t we? That could be.’ The duchess herself says ‘You never know’ when she faces questions about whether she will become queen.

s.marsden@dailymail.co.uk