After decades of devotion and 18 years of marriage, King Charles III will finally see his goal realised when his “darling wife” Queen Camilla is crowned at his side on Saturday.
She was the non-negotiable part of his life, despite their long relationship challenging Britain’s institutions and triggering strong public resistance.
But at London’s Westminster Abbey, Camilla will be anointed and crowned as queen, in the presence of world leaders.
Never truly in her element in the public eye, is the woman who lived for so long in the shadows worried about the global spotlight of the coronation?
“Anyone would be anxious on an occasion of this sort of importance,” her son Tom Parker Bowles told The News Agents podcast.
“I’d be terrified if I had to sort of walk out wearing ancient robes,” the food writer said.
“She’s 75, it’s hard to do it. But she never complained.”
Parker Bowles said the couple were “doing amazingly”.
His 74-year-old stepfather was a “good, kind, intelligent man who cares deeply about his roles”, he said.
However, the road to the coronation has not been easy.
– Vilified –
In the 1990s, Camilla was the most hated woman in Britain, blamed by Princess Diana for the break-up of her own marriage to Charles. Diana nicknamed Camilla the “rottweiler”.
Charles and Diana’s younger son Prince Harry, now estranged from the monarchy, branded her a “villain” who played the long game to get the crown.
But Charles never wavered in his devotion to her.
The couple first met in the 1970s. Close to aristocratic circles, Camilla Shand was relaxed in his company, amusing and reassuring the then-insecure prince.
However, while Charles went off to serve in the Royal Navy, Camilla fell for the playboy army officer Andrew Parker Bowles, tying the knot in 1973, leaving Charles feeling empty and devastated.
Their marriage crumbled amid Parker Bowles’ extra-marital affairs.
In 1981, Charles wed Diana Spencer, the daughter of an earl, in what was branded a fairytale marriage. He was 32; she had just turned 20. Camilla was among the wedding guests.
Hopelessly mismatched, Charles and Diana soon drifted apart. Prince William was born in 1982 and Harry in 1984.
As the marriage disintegrated, Charles fell back on Camilla and they rekindled their relationship.
– Home and dry –
Britain’s tabloid press went to town, in 1993 publishing transcripts of intimate phone conversations secretly recorded four years earlier.
The conversation veered between being reincarnated as a tampon and discussing motorway directions. After that humiliation, some wondered whether Charles would ever become king.
Camilla divorced in 1995; Charles in 1996. Diana’s death in a 1997 Paris car crash saw Charles’s popularity plummet. Camilla retreated further into the shadows.
It took years of carefully orchestrated public relations work to pave the way towards even public acceptance of Camilla — let alone the possibility of marriage.
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