King Charles III, former Prince of Wales, and Camilla Parker Bowles, Queen Consort of United Kingdom, former Duchess of Cornwall, have been married for 17 years now. Their relationship and marriage came through a lot of controversies and backlash. The divorce, followed by the unfortunate accident of Charles’s first wife, Princess Diana, shook the world.
What seemed like a fairytale marriage was actually rife with cheating, dishonesty, and misunderstandings, which eventually led to a chasm between Prince Charles and Diana. If Charles was in a relationship with Camilla before and during his first marriage, why didn’t he marry her in the first place? Here’s what happened between the two.
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How And Where Did King Charles And Camilla Parker Bowles Meet?
Camilla and Chares first met in 1970 at a Polo match at Windsor Great Park. The duo hit it off almost immediately. They were closer in age, and Charles was attracted to her extroverted and tomboy personality. He also liked how she always treated him equally and never idolized him. Thereafter, although the two never publicly acknowledged or committed to their relationship, nonetheless, they were spotted out together multiple times.
Their relationship halted when Charles had to join the Royal Navy. This also put distance between the two, especially after some members of the royal family were advising Charles not to look forward to marrying him. “Lovely for you two to have a fling, but this absolutely cannot end in marriage,” Prince Charles’s great uncle, and father figure, Lord Mountbatten, advised him.
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The Reasons Camilla Didn’t Qualify To Be Charles’ Wife
There were quite a few reasons that Charles didn’t marry Camilla, or couldn’t marry, since many believe that after he returned from the Royal Navy, he’d have asked for her hand if she weren’t already engaged to Andrew Parker Bowles. It is rumored that Camilla’s father posted a fake Camilla-Andrew engagement in the newspapers and Andrew was forced into a marriage with her. When Charles returned, he saw the cue and went to look for a suitable wife.
Apart from this, Camilla didn’t qualify as the “suitable wife“, especially for Charles, who was to be the King someday, for two major reasons. First, she was seen under the image of a “party girl” and “experienced woman” and that wasn’t really what the Royal Family wanted. Secondly, she also didn’t belong to a pure aristocratic social standing, and therefore not seen fit to be a princess.
Charles met Diana Spencer in 1980 and found her to be the perfect fit for the wife of a future king. However, we all know how the marriage ended. The two were almost 13 years apart in age. Charles cheated on Diana with Camilla, and it was a public spectacle. Diana even commented about her marriage in her most famous BBC interview, “there were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded.”
Camilla and Andrew divorced in 1995, while Diana and Charles’s divorce was finalized in 1996. Camilla and Charles tied the knot in 2005.
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