Camilla, Queen of the United Kingdom, has been a source of fascination since the then Camilla Parker Bowles’s long-term affair with King Charles III came to light. The love story of Charles and Camilla has captivated the world, but the woman at the center of the storm was for years a mystery. If you have ever wondered about Camilla and her fascinating rise from aristocratic country girl to queen, just know that there is more to the modest mom-of-two than meets the eye.
Born Camilla Rosemary Shand, Queen Camilla is remarkably down-to-earth, and her kind, open personality has surprised many who have met her over the years she’s been married to Charles III.
In 2004, author and playwright Kate Mosse was at a party for food writer Tom Parker Bowles. “I remember standing in the queue for the loo with an incredibly nice woman who had a rather deep and infectious laugh, and we had a bit of a chat. It was the women’s locker-room moment,” Mosse told Penny Junor, author of The Duchess: Camilla Parker Bowles and the Love Affair That Rocked the Crown. It was only later in the evening that she learned the mystery woman, who was a “complete hoot,” was none other than Tom’s mother, the notorious Camilla Parker Bowles.
Mosse’s reaction to Queen Camilla, then the Duchess of Cornwall, is typical of those who actually meet her. “She has a delightful personality. She’s very approachable, very easy to talk to, warm, friendly, funny,” Junor, a journalist who has written numerous books on the royals, including The Duchess, the definitive biography of Camilla, tells Vanity Fair. “She always has a twinkle in her eye and is a terrible giggler, often reducing Charles to fits of giggles too.”
Once reviled as the “most hated woman in Britain,” Queen Camilla has proved herself to be much more than the “third person” in the marriage of Charles and Princess Diana. Confident and breezy, she loves the competitive dance show Strictly Come Dancing; her rescue Jack Russell terriers, Bluebell and Beth; and King Charles III.
Camilla’s Early Life
Camilla Rosemary Shand was born on July 17, 1947, in London. Camilla has royal blood: Her illustrious forebearers include descendants of the royal Stuart bloodline, who ruled England from 1603 to 1714.
Charles and Camilla at a polo match, circa 1972.
Hulton Deutsch/Getty Images.
Unlike Charles and Diana, the thoroughly upper-class Camilla had an extraordinarily boisterous and joyful childhood. Raised primarily in the East Sussex countryside, she was extremely close to her siblings and parents, Bruce and Rosalind Shand, who (atypical for the time) were hands-on parents. “As a little girl she marched happily into school without looking back,” Junor writes in The Duchess. “She galloped her pony and flew over jumps without an anxious thought. She charged into the sea and laughed at the waves.”
An indifferent student, Camilla was fun-loving, athletic, and unambitious. After school she worked as a secretary for a time, and then as a receptionist for decorators Sibyl Colefax & John Fowler (who fired her after she came in late after a night on the town).
“She couldn’t have been less interested in the idea of a career. She wasn’t itching to travel…and had no desire to go to university,” Junor writes in The Duchess. “She wanted no more from life than to be happily married to an upper-class man and live a sociable life in the country with horses, dogs, children, and someone to look after them all and do the hard graft.”
Camilla Meets Prince Charles
Camilla Rosemary Shand met Prince Charles, considered the most eligible bachelor in the world, in the summer of 1970. Camilla was 16 months older than Charles. The attraction between the pair was instant, especially on the part of the awkward Prince of Wales. “Charles loved that Camilla smiled with her eyes as well as her mouth, and laughed at the same silly things he did,” Junor writes.
The two started dating, and Charles later described the relationship as “blissful, peaceful, and mutually happy.” Outside forces, however, were pulling them apart. According to Junor, Charles’s great-uncle and surrogate father, Lord Mountbatten, disapproved of the relationship and prevented Charles from marrying Camilla, since she was not a virgin, nor aristocratic enough. There was also the fact that Camilla was head over heels in love with the dashing, sophisticated Army Calvary officer Andrew Parker Bowles, who had a reputation as a womanizer and reportedly dated Princess Anne for a time.
Camilla’s First Marriage to Andrew Parker Bowles
A determined Camilla Rosemary Shand finally snagged Andrew Parker Bowles, and they married on July 4, 1973, despite Charles’s pleas to cancel the wedding. They had two children, Tom and Laura, and Camilla settled into the role she had always wanted, that of a country wife and mother.
