Queen Camilla
Camilla Parker Bowles (born July 17, 1947) was girlfriend, then mistress, and is now the fiancée of Charles, Prince of Wales. She and the Prince of Wales have announced that they will wed on April 8, 2005.
She was born Camilla Rosemary Shand in London. Her parents were the Hon. Rosalind Cubitt, elder daughter of the 3rd Baron Ashcombe (whose forebear was the builder Thomas Cubitt, who made a fortune constructing much of London's West End for the Grosvenor family), and her husband, Major Bruce Shand, a British Army officer turned wine merchant and half-brother of Elspeth Howe.
Mrs. Parker Bowles is related to three other favourites of the British royal family. She is a great-granddaughter of famed royal mistress Alice Keppel (Mrs George Keppel, née Edmonstone), who was the last love of the Prince of Wales's great-great-grandfather, Edward VII. She is also a descendant via her grandmother Sonia Keppel of Arnold Joost van Keppel, 1st Earl of Albemarle, a love of William III, and of the 1st Duke of Richmond, the illegitimate son of King Charles II by his mistress Louise-Renée de Penancoet de Kéroualle, duchess of Portsmouth. She is also a great-niece of Violet Trefusis, a noted socialite who caused an international scandal in the 1920s by eloping with fellow writer Vita Sackville-West; both ladies were married at the time.
The relationship between the former Mrs Parker Bowles and the Prince of Wales began in 1972, before either of them was married, but ended a year later, reportedly after the prince delayed proposing marriage. Camilla Shand was married in 1973 to Andrew Parker Bowles, an Army officer who was a friend of the Prince of Wales and a godson of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother; they divorced in 1995. The couple had two children: Tom (born 1974, a food columnist for Tatler who is a godson of the Prince of Wales) and Laura (born 1979).
Wales and Parker Bowles's friendship continued. The Parker Bowles marriage became shaky, and Andrew Parker Bowles took a long-term mistress who later became his second wife. Parker Bowles and the Prince of Wales did not now have the option of a public romance, and Wales looked elsewhere for a wife.
Publicly, the enduring relationship of the Prince of Wales and Parker Bowles was blamed by the late Diana, Princess of Wales for the break-up of the Wales' marriage; privately, the princess referred to Mrs Parker Bowles, with whom she had originally been on affable terms, as "the Rottweiler". Diana reported that Parker Bowles had known before she did that the Prince of Wales was going to propose to her. The Prince and Parker Bowles bought one another presents and used the pet nicknames of "Fred" and "Gladys" to one another. The Prince's supporters maintained that Diana's "paranoid fixation" over his friendship with Parker Bowles broke up their marriage.
The continuing relationship between the Prince of Wales and Parker Bowles was kept secret until the early 1990s, when the rift between the Prince and Princess of Wales became public knowledge. It was the "Camillagate" scandal — tape recordings of a private telephone conversation between the Prince of Wales and Parker Bowles — that brought it to the surface. It has been claimed by royal "insiders," though denied by both the couple and their friends, that their affair had been conducted throughout the Prince's engagement. The affair publicly resumed after he made the decision to separate from his wife. However, it was his public admission, in a television interview with Jonathan Dimbleby, that he had committed adultery that caused Mr and Mrs Parker Bowles to announce their own divorce. Andrew Parker Bowles soon remarried.
Mrs Parker Bowles is said to have lost heavily along with other Lloyd's Names, and thus have depleted her private fortune, derived mostly from her Cubitt ancestors. She is a dedicated road cyclist and is said to have followed the track of the Tour de France twice in 1966 and 1969 on her own bike.
Camilla Parker Bowles now lives openly with the Prince of Wales at Highgrove House and appears with him at social events. She also lives at Clarence House, the former residence of the late Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, which is now the Prince of Wales's official London residence. He spent his early childhood in the house, which was the first residence of his newlywed parents, Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom and the Duke of Edinburgh.
On February 10, 2005 it was announced that Mrs Parker Bowles and the Prince of Wales are to marry on April 8, 2005 at Windsor Castle with a civil service and religious prayer. The Archbishop of Canterbury will bless the service in the Windsor Castle chapel after the wedding is registered. It was also announced that Mrs Parker Bowles would thereafter be known as Her Royal Highness The Duchess of Cornwall, and that after the accession of the Prince of Wales to the Throne that she would by styled Her Royal Highness The Princess Consort, a style that echoes that which was utilized by Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha when he married Queen Victoria and was made His Royal Highness The Prince Consort. It is unknown, however, whether such styles would have any basis in law, since there is no precedent in British history for the wife of a King not automatically becoming a Queen.
After the engagement announcement, the couple were congratulated by Queen Elizabeth II and her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh; the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams; the Prime Minister, Tony Blair; the Leader of the Opposition, Michael Howard; the Leader of the House of Commons, Peter Hain; and the various heads of Commonwealth countries.
Additional Reading
- Jonathan Dimbleby, The Prince of Wales, a Biography (Little, Brown and Company, 1994) ISBN 0316910163