Once upon a time, Camilla Parker Bowles, the Duchess of Cornwall, had mercilessly broken Prince Charles' heart while he was out of the country, busy tending to Royal Navy duties in the West Indies. What she did when Charles was away had really hurt him and supposedly made him want to fly directly back to England in order to see her and set things straight.
According to sources, Camilla made a decision that would affect not only the course of her own life, but of Prince Charles' and probably Lady Diana Spencer's as well. In 1973, Camilla decided to marry a handsome cavalry officer while her ex-lover and future king was away.
She supposedly fell so much in love with Andrew Parker Bowles and had been firm in her desire to become his wife, even though Andrew himself had little liking for Camilla. The Duchess' mother, Rosalind Shand, did not support whatever plans her daughter had with the military officer. She believed he did not treat her well and was often unkind to her.
However, Camilla's father, Bruce Shand, together with Andrew's brother, pressured Andrew into proposing to her. They had released an engagement announcement between the two in the newspapers, which left Andrew with no choice but to propose to Camilla for real. And by all means, she accepted.
The couple got married and had settled down. And this drove Prince Charles' to write a dozen letters addressed to Camilla, expressing his anguish for what she had done. He also continuously begged her weeks before she was supposed to get married, to put a stop to the wedding, and that he would come home to her as soon as he could. But, Camilla's mind could not be changed, not even by the future King's pleads.
From a source close to Prince Charles, it was reported that, in one of his letters, he wrote it seemed really cruel to him that the months of the peaceful, blissful, and healthy relationship he had with the Duchess had all amounted to nothing.
According to Penny Junor, who wrote Camilla's biography entitled The Duchess, although she had loved Charles' dearly, she had absolutely no interest in the title to be bestowed upon her if she married the Prince. She did not want anything to do with becoming the Princess of Wales or the future Queen, and instead favored a life as a lady married to an officer of the military.
However, he would then go on to find out that her husband was having an affair with Prince Charles' sister, Princess Anne.
Prince Charles never truly got over the Duchess of Cornwall, but later on married the beloved people's princess, Diana Spencer. However, things went sour when Diana had found out that her husband had rekindled his affair with Camilla, and the royal couple eventually split in 1992.
Several years after both of their divorces, Camilla and Prince Charles tied the knot and have finally settled down as an official and legal couple, despite the backlash and hateful comments from the public, and even from the rest of the royal family. But everybody has apparently learned to coexist under the same palace roof.
Camilla and Prince Charles were last spotted together in public on a 12-day tour of the Caribbean early in May.
