Queen Elizabeth II said she wants Camilla to be known as Queen Consort.
London:
Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, has received Queen Elizabeth II’s blessing to be known as Queen Consort when Prince Charles becomes king, on a remarkable journey to public acceptance after she was vilified for her role in the breakdown of his marriage to Princess Diana.
In a message to the nation on Saturday, the Queen praised Camilla’s “loyal service,” she said she hoped her daughter-in-law will be known as queen consort when Charles takes the throne.
Charles has always believed that his “cute wife” should be given the title, The Times reported, citing a source.
Yet Camilla was vilified for years as the marriage breaker who shattered Britain’s fairytale royal love story.
Diana famously complained in a 1995 BBC television interview that “there were three of us in this marriage” – she, Charles and Camilla, his longtime lover.
She even called her love rival a “rottweiler.”
After Diana died in a car accident in Paris in 1997, Charles and Camilla were free to rekindle their decades-old romance, first discreetly and then more publicly.
The couple married in 2005, with a royal announcement that she would be known as princess consort due to the sensitivity of the issue, but she gradually gained acclaim as the future king’s loyal wife.
She has played a solo role, participated in the Booker Literary Awards and even the final of the television talent contest “Strictly Come Dancing”.
She campaigns to raise awareness of osteoporosis – a condition her mother, Rosalind, suffered from – and has an Instagram book club.
But despite her increased fame, there is still controversy over whether she should be given the title of queen if Charles becomes king.
A YouGov poll in November 2021 found that only 14 percent would like to see her become ‘queen’, while 42 percent preferred the title of ‘Princess Consort’.
According to YouGov’s latest ranking from the last quarter of 2021, she is the 11th most popular royal, with 34 percent saying they like her and 28 percent saying they hate her.
Traditional upbringing
Born Camilla Rosemary Shand in London on July 17, 1947, Camilla received a traditional upbringing among the wealthy upper classes of Britain.
The granddaughter of the 3rd Baron Ashcombe, Roland Cubitt, was educated in London, went to school in Switzerland and France and spent her family life on an estate in Sussex, in the south of England.
Confident and attractive, she first met Prince Charles as a young woman at a polo match in the early 1970s, and they later became close.
But believing that Charles would never propose, she married British Army officer Andrew Parker Bowles in 1973. Royal guests included the Queen’s sister, Princess Margaret, and the monarch’s daughter, Princess Anne.
The couple had two children: Tom Parker Bowles, whose godfather is Charles, is now a food writer, while Laura Lopes is an art curator.
Mutual feelings with the prince persisted, however, with Charles reportedly continuing to see Camilla even after his high profile marriage to Diana at St Paul’s Cathedral in London in 1981.
The romance was completely revived later that decade when the royal marriage crumbled, which was luridly chronicled in leaked recorded phone calls to the tabloid press.
Camilla and Andrew Parker Bowles divorced in 1995, a year before Charles and Diana.
After Diana’s death, Charles and Parker Bowles kept their relationship discreet, but it gradually became apparent that they were effectively living together as husband and wife.
After months of careful planning, the couple made their first public appearance together in 1999 and became increasingly open about their relationship after that.
Windsor wedding
They were married on April 9, 2005 in the royal town of Windsor, in a civil ceremony followed by a religious blessing in St. George’s Chapel, in the presence of Queen Elizabeth II.
Both divorced, there was controversy over whether they could have a church wedding, especially given Charles’ future role as Supreme Governor of the Church of England.
But the wedding — postponed a day to allow the prince to attend Pope John Paul II’s funeral — drew a cheering crowd of 20,000 onto the streets in the shadow of Windsor Castle.
As a married couple, in the years that followed they settled into a normal life of royal duties, overseas travel and vacations on Balmoral, the royal estate in the north east of Scotland.
Camilla — known as the Duchess of Rothesay in Scotland — remains the archetype of the tweed-wearing, horse-loving British land aristocrat.
She has two Jack Russell terriers, rescue dogs Beth and Bluebell, and is an avid flower arranger.
Over time, Camilla has also been widely adopted by the royal family, including Charles and Diana’s two sons, Princes William and Harry.
In 2005, Harry dismissed the image of her as a “bad stepmother”, describing her as a “great woman and she made our father very, very happy, which is the most important thing.
“William and I love her dearly.”
In December 2021, the Queen strengthened Camilla’s role by making her a member of the ancient Order of the Garter, an honor none of her other children’s husbands have been accorded.
(This story was not edited by DailyExpertNews staff and was generated automatically from a syndicated feed.)
