Prince Charles and Camilla's story
Prince Charles to marry his true love
Thursday, February 10, 2005
[UK News]: IT is a love that has torn apart the royal family and divided a kingdom. It destroyed the fairytale marriage of modern times and continues to threaten the future of the monarchy. Yet, despite all the problems it has created, the union between Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles remains the one constant of the Prince's tortured life. For more than 30 years, through both their failed marriages and acrimonious divorces, the two have stuck together. Despite Camilla's unpopularity across Britain and among royal fans across the world, Charles has remained steadfastly loyal to his one true love.
It began at a polo match in 1970 when the Prince, then a dashing 21-year-old, encountered a chat-up line that has entered regal legend. Camilla Shand, 16 months older than the Prince, introduced herself with the words: "My great grandmother was the mistress of your great grandfather – so how about it?"
She was referring to the affair between Alice Keppel and Edward VII, a dalliance that in an era when kings and princes considered it a duty to have mistresses, never caused the stir it would three generations later.
While Camilla was by no means the prettiest girl on the aristocratic circuit, she was nevertheless good fun, self-confident and sexually easy-going. Charles was entranced.
According to his royal biographer, Jonathon Dimbleby, Camilla "smiled with her eyes as well as her mouth".
Had Charles pursued Camilla as his bride there and then, history might have been different. She was already seeing future husband Andrew Parker Bowles, whose family had long-standing royal links. Yet she was as drawn to Charles as he was to her. The Prince was then one of the world's most eligible bachelors.
And she was from good stock. Her father, Bruce Shand, was a decorated major with the Royal Lancers and a member of the Queen's household.
But Charles dithered. Royal observers say an old regal convention underpinned his hesitation: the tradition that princes must marry virgins.
Some blame his great uncle Lord Mountbatten for persuading him that a "bedded-can't-be-wedded" rule for women still applied to the royal family.
Instead, Charles carried on his affair with Camilla in secrecy, a pattern that would have tragic consequences in years to come.
Creepily, Camilla scrutinised Charles's prospective brides, including a young Diana Spencer.
Their affair continued right up until the week before the wedding and according to Diana, never ceased. A letter from Diana to the Prince's father, the Duke of Edinburgh, declared Charles was "never emotionally divorced from (Camilla)".
"Charles told me you said that if the marriage was not working well after five years he could essentially return to Camilla," she wrote. Long before the five years were up, he did just that.
As reports of their relationship breaking down surfaced in the media, Camilla was quickly demonised as the marriage-wrecker. She was pelted with bread rolls in a Wiltshire supermarket in 1993 – four years before Diana's death amplified her unpopularity.
There was a broad disapproval and bafflement at this older woman with questionable dress sense and bird's-nest hair – how could she have bested the people's fairytale princess for the prince's heart? Following Diana's death, Camilla's standing plunged in a nation seeking scapegoats. Her image never really recovered.
The more Charles attempts to bring Camilla into the fold, the greater the vitriol she attracts from Britons.
And her cause has not been helped by the Queen, who continues to ostracise Camilla and ignores Charles's pleas to include her at the family's Christmas retreats at Balmoral.
Charles hopes the April betrothal will change that. By legitimising his one great love affair, he hopes to smooth the way for his eventual accession to the throne. Ironically, it may have the opposite effect.
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