Camilla Parker-Bowles, Duchess of Cornwall, is the second wife of Charles, Prince of Wales. However, she will always be known as the one who ruined the marriage of Prince Charles and Princess Diana. Although she was not the sole reason why the Prince and Princess of Wales ended up in divorce, as the heir apparent to the British throne chose her over his wife, Camilla still gets most of the public scrutiny.
With their love surviving all the hardships and criticisms, many may have thought that Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles had a very sweet first moment. But, the truth is, their first meeting wasn’t romantic at all.
When she first met Prince Charles in 1971 at a polo match in Windsor, Camilla talked to him about her great-grandmother and his great-great-grandfather’s affair. “My great-grandmother and your great-great-grandfather were lovers,” she said. “So what about it?” Although Camilla didn’t say anything about her and Prince Charles to have an affair at the time, her words seemingly revealed that she was open to the idea.
Royal author Christopher Andersen wrote in his book “Game Of Crowns” that Camilla Parker-Bowles always had an agenda to become Queen. The young Camilla was so proud that her great-grandmother was the lover of Edward VII that she ordered her classmates to bow down before her. “We’re practically royalty,” she told her classmates, as per Andersen.
Actress Lynn Redgrave, Camilla’s senior in their school at Queen’s Gate, previously revealed in an interview that “landing a rich husband was the top of the agenda. Camilla . . . wanted to have fun, but she also wanted to marry well because, in her mind, that would be the most fun of all.”
Prince Charles and Camilla Parker-Bowles became lovers while the latter was having a break from her then-on-off boyfriend army officer Andrew Parker-Bowles. Camilla, eventually, got married to Andrew in 1973, and Prince Charles started dating Diana in 1980. A year later, Prince Charles proposed to Diana on February 6 and got married on July 29, 1981, at St Paul's Cathedral.
Although Camilla was married to Andrew and Prince Charles tied the knot with Princess Diana, the two, allegedly, never stopped seeing each other. The Princess of Wales famously said in a 1995 interview with Martin Bashir, "Well, there were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded."
In 1993, Prince Charles and Princess Diana, officially, announced their split. After the Prince and Princess of Wales’ divorce, Lady Elsa Bowker said that “Camilla started plotting to become the next queen. She thought the most she could hope for was to someday be the King’s mistress, but now Diana was out of the way, and Camilla wanted more.”
In 2005, Prince Charles married Camilla. With the Prince of Wales being the next in line to the throne, Camilla is only a step closer to fulfilling her dream.
