Camilla: From mistress to queen consort

It is the night of December 17,1989. A radio enthusiast is scanning frequencies - often used by police officers and pirate radio DJs - when he stumbles on a private phone call between a man and a woman.

It is obvious they are lovers. The man’s voice sounds familiar. The radio operator presses the record button.  The man is 41-year-old Prince Charles, the eldest son of Queen Elizabeth II, the future King of England and the husband of Princess Diana. 

But the woman on the other end of the line does not sound like his wife. She is Camilla Parker Bowles - a 42-year-old married mother who, outside of royal circles, is almost entirely unknown. But this tape will change that forever.

An idyllic childhood
The eldest of three siblings, Camilla Rosemary Shand, was born in London on July 17, 1947 to Rosalind and Bruce Shand - an aristocrat and a retired army major. Their home was a sprawling 18th-century affair set in more than five acres of East Sussex countryside, with an orchard, a pool and a paddock. 

“It’s quite difficult to find many families that have so many links, as the queen consort does to her husband’s family,”Sky News royal expert Major-General Alastair Bruce.

Camilla attended the fashionable Queen’s Gate school in London. A popular, but fairly average student, she managed just one O-Level, before finishing school in Switzerland at 16. There she was schooled in upper class etiquette. 

‘Milla’, as her friends called her, returned to London in 1965 just as the 1960s started swinging.  That spring, she attended a series of glittering balls, where she met Andrew Parker Bowles, a major in the Royal House Guards, who played on Prince Charles’s polo team. The pair soon became an item, and dated on and off for seven years. 

An unbreakable bond
Camilla first met Charles at a polo match in Windsor in the early 1970s. There was an instant attraction and their relationship flourished. Reports vary as to why the couple split after 18 happy months. Charles’s decision to sign-up to the Royal Navy was the catalyst, but there were other factors at play. The royal family is said to have thought the match was unsuitable.

Camilla turned her attention back to her long-standing paramour, Andrew, and the pair were married in 1973. But the bond between Camilla and Charles proved unbreakable. 

“He did not choose Camilla then, but she stayed in his life.” Phil Craig, author of Diana: Story of a Princess.

Meanwhile, the royal household focused on finding a more suitable bride for the playboy prince. In 1980, Charles started dating Diana Spencer, the younger sister of his ex- girlfriend, Lady Sarah.  Diana, 18, was everything Camilla was not - unattached, virtuous and a virgin - the perfect match and an ideal future queen.

A royal fairytale
In a whirlwind romance that led to marriage in July 1981, a record-breaking 750 million people worldwide tuned in to watch Diana and Charles say their vows at St Paul’s Cathedral. Watching were 2,500 guests - the queen, the duke of Edinburgh, overseas royals including Grace Kelly, and a woman in a pale grey dress and pillbox hat - Camilla.   

As Diana floated down the aisle, she spotted Charles’s close ‘friend’. Camilla made “every effort” to be nice to Diana at the beginning, says Phil Craig, inviting her out for lunch and even sending little notes.

In the summer of 1982, Diana gave birth to Prince William. Two years later he was joined by his brother Harry. On the surface they looked the perfect royal family. But behind closed doors, it was starting to fall apart. 

Romours of Charles and Camilla
News first started circulating about trouble in the couple’s marriage in the mid to late 1980s. “No speculation on earth would ever have got near to the truth,” according to former Sky News royal correspondent Simon McCoy.

He says it was “much more devastating than anything the papers were saying might be going on, because of what happened afterwards”.

The leaked tape
Charles and Camilla’s taped conversation found its way to the editor of the Daily Mirror. He faced a dilemma; by publishing and exposing the affair, it might threaten Charles’s succession and the continuity of the royal family. 

There were also concerns about how a fragile Princess Diana would react, not to mention possible legal action. The bombshell tape stayed locked in the newspaper’s safe and the public remained oblivious to the cracks in Charles and Diana’s marriage. Then came a series of explosive allegations. 

In late 1992, Andrew Morton published his tell-all book written from the transcripts of tapes smuggled to him from Diana. It revealed the ongoing affair between Charles and Camilla. 
“It was her story,” said Simon McCoy. “Much of it was true. A lot of it was powered by the anger and grief of a woman who was feeling unloved and that was very powerful to read…  She was calling Camilla a Rottweiler and that was a tag that stuck.”

Separation of Charles and Diana
In December 1992, Buckingham Palace announced the prince and princess of Wales had decided to separate, but had no plans to divorce. However, Charles and Camilla were about to be tested again. In January 1993, in Sydney, a little-known glossy magazine, called New Idea, published the biggest story in its 100-year history. They had the tape. Australia’s less strict libel laws meant the details of Charles and Camilla’s exchange would soon be plastered on front pages around the world.

‘Tampongate’ or ‘Camillagate’, as the scandal was known, was born. British newspapers scrambled to re-publish New Idea’s report. “The tapes when they came out were utterly devastating,” says Simon McCoy. “The Sun put them on a constant loop that you could dial in and listen to.”

For Prince Charles, it was humiliating proof of his affair, one which now brought into question his suitability as heir. The palace was in meltdown.

Could this be the end for Charles and Camilla? Could this be the end for Charles as future king?  Crowds of frenzied reporters and photographers with long lenses gathered at the end of the driveway, desperate for a glimpse of Mrs Parker Bowles, the mistress of the prince of Wales.  “To suddenly find yourself as public enemy number one must have been horrific,” says Camilla’s friend, the author Kathy Lette.

While the sensible thing might have been to call it quits with Charles, Camilla chose a different path. The clue was in the tape.  

The tape was a “moment of total vindication for Diana”, Phil says, adding she became a “global icon of female victimhood” and won the sympathy of women around the world.  The royal family split into two groups: Camp Charles and Camilla, and Camp Diana. The public, guided by the media, followed suit.  The war of the Wales’s was born. 

Bombshell interviews
For 18 months after their affair became public, Charles and Camilla were silent, leaving the narrative to be shaped by Diana and the press. But eventually, Charles decided not to be a bystander. 

Together with his friend, a broadcaster, Jonathan Dimbleby, they made the documentary, Charles: The Private Man, The Public Role, which aired in June 1994 on ITV. For the first time, Charles addressed the allegations about his relationship with Camilla. 

“She has been a friend for a very long time and along with a lot of other friends and will continue to be a friend for a very long time,” he said. When asked about the collapse of his marriage and if he had been faithful to Diana, he responded: “Yes. Until it became irretrievably broken down. I suppose, having tried.” 

What was meant to be a public relations victory, turned into disaster. The next morning, for the first time, Charles admitted that he had been having an affair with Camilla, following a press briefing called by his private secretary. 

Weeks later, Camilla lost her mother, Rosalind. Stricken by grief, she fled to Portugal as her and Charles’s popularity sank even lower. It was the final straw for Camilla’s husband, who asked for a divorce.

But for an empowered Diana, her bombshell interview with BBC journalist Martin Bashir, just over a year later made headlines around the world. It remains mired in controversy to this day. A BBC-commissioned report found Bashir had used fake bank statements to help secure the interview - playing into Diana’s paranoia about the royal family at that time.  

That said, it doesn’t change the impact of what she revealed. It was here Diana delivered the famous line “well, there were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded”, in reference to Camilla. 

Tragedy in the tunnel
Charles and Diana’s divorce was finalised on August 28, 1996. The nation mourned the end of their fairytale, but nobody was prepared for the devastation that was to follow. On August 31, 1997, Princess Diana was killed in a car crash in Paris, aged just 36. Millions around the world were shocked and heartbroken. Charles called Camilla as soon as he heard Diana had died.The public blamed Charles for Diana’s death, blamed him for the entire mess. And he shouldered that. After Diana’s death, it took Camila16 months before she broke cover.  

Relationship becomes official 
On a cold and windy Thursday night in 1999, a throng of 200 photographers jostled for space outside the famous Ritz hotel in London, as Camilla and Prince Charles celebrated the 50th birthday of Camilla’s sister, Annabel. This was the night they decided to make their relationship official. At midnight, Camilla emerged through the doors of the Ritz into a blizzard of camera flashes and shouts from the press. 

Camilla was now on the road to win over the same tabloid press that had almost destroyed her. “MEET THE MISTRESS” said The Sun. “AT LAST” read the headline on the front of The Mirror.  
But dealing with the press was just one part of the couple’s battle. Until 2000, Camilla still had not met one of the most important women in Charles’s life - the Queen.  

The wife Charles always wanted
Camilla’s affair with Charles had threatened the very future of the royal family.  The pair met at a birthday party that Charles held for King Constantine of Greece at Highgrove on June 3, 2000.  But it proved to be a success, and soon after, Camilla moved into Charles’s official residence at Clarence House. Her relationship with the queen strengthened, with invitations to other engagements including the Queen’s Golden Jubilee celebrations in 2002.  

The real Camilla
After marrying Charles, Camilla turned to charity work. She wanted to use her newplatform, particularly for domestic violence. The press also began to see her differently - as Camilla the charity worker. 

Any lingering doubts about Camilla’s future status were finally dispelled in February 2022, when the queen gave her blessing to Camilla taking the title queen consort, saying it was her “sincere wish”.

Just months later, on September 8, 2022, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, the UK’s longest-serving monarch, died aged 96. The throne was passed immediately to Charles, the longest-serving heir apparent in British history. Camilla, 75, stood quietly beside her husband as he made his first speech as king. 

For the love of Charles
For a long time, her relationship with Charles had played out in private and only occasionally, but devastatingly, burst into the public arena - the tapes, the TV interviews - only to slink back again into the shadows. 

The drama wasn’t over yet.  Prince Harry’s memoir, Spare, published in January 2023, made sure the cracks were still public. And his subsequent media rounds rubbed salt in the wounds, particularly in his interview with American network CBS. 

“She was the villain. She was the third person in their marriage. She needed to rehabilitate her image,” Harry said of his stepmother.  A month before the king’s coronation, the royal family confirmed Camilla will be known as queen. 

From her first explosive and embarrassing introduction into the public consciousness to her coronation as queen, it’s all been for love - for the love of Charles. 

The Queen’s blessing
With the monarch on side, Charles finally asked Camilla to marry him on February 10, 2005. Camilla, then 57.  

The couple had overcome huge personal challenges, and achieved the unimaginable - they won the approval of the queen.  

In November 25, 2007, Prince Charles and the duchess of Cornwall travelled to the source of the Nile – the mysterious spot which was once the holy grail for British explorers.

The queen consort accompanies the monarch to official engagements, at which she is addressed as “her royal highness.” 

The queen consort also serves as a counsellor of state, along with the next four royals who are in the line of succession: Prince William, Prince Harry, Prince Andrew and Princess Beatrice. The role allows Camilla to temporarily carry out some duties on behalf of Charles if he is ill or travelling abroad. She attends Privy Council meetings, signs routine documents and receives the credentials of new ambassadors to the United Kingdom,” according to the royal family.