As we discussed over the weekend, there’s a new, unauthorized royal tell-all book. Tom Bower’s Rebel Prince: The Power, Passion and Defiance of Prince Charles is already making headlines because of Bower’s claims – and his sources’ claims – that Charles is just a petty, selfish madman, basically. Bower paints Charles as a dude who is jealous of his own shadow, jealous of his sons’ popularity, jealous of William’s affection for the Middleton family and a lot more. In some new excerpts (from the Daily Mail), Bower claims that the Queen absolutely loathed Camilla for years and that the Queen actively discouraged Charles from ever marrying Camilla.
Charles tried to bring Camilla into the fold in 1998: The Prince knew better than anyone, there was no possibility of bringing their relationship out into the open without the Queen’s approval. Princess Margaret, who sympathised with him, had tried to intercede on his behalf. But the Queen had told her sister she didn’t want to meet, or even talk about, Camilla. So, exasperated by what he termed an intolerable situation, and egged on by Margaret, he approached his mother one night in her sitting room at Balmoral. He asked that she soften her antagonism so he could live openly with Camilla. His hope was that the Queen, who rarely interfered, would at least not directly forbid it. But on that evening she’d had several martinis, and to Charles’s surprise she replied forcefully: she would not condone his adultery, nor forgive Camilla for not leaving Charles alone to allow his marriage to recover. She vented her anger that he had lied about his relationship with what she called ‘that wicked woman’, and added: ‘I want nothing to do with her.’
Charles believed Andrew was plotting against him: Andrew, he believed, had been spreading poison about Camilla to the Queen and Prince Philip. Now, mindful of Diana’s prediction on Panorama that he would never be king, Charles convinced himself that Diana and Sarah, Andrew’s estranged wife, were hatching plans to replace him as heir — by announcing that on the Queen’s death, or abdication, Andrew would be Regent until William was 18, when he would take over. ‘Andrew wanted to be me,’ Charles later told his assistant private secretary, Mark Bolland, who acted as his spin doctor. ‘I should have let him work with me. Now he’s unhelpful.’
Charles whined to everybody around the Queen in the 1990s: On another occasion, Charles dared to tell his mother’s private secretary, Robert Fellowes, that the Queen ‘needed to move with the times’. Unsurprisingly, the Prince’s advice was ignored. Fellowes had no sympathy for Charles and Camilla. ‘Those two are the most selfish people I’ve ever met,’ he said.
The excerpts go on and on, and it took me a second to realize that most of the shadiest stuff came from the 1990s, when Diana was still alive and Charles was trying to reintroduce Camilla as his official girlfriend. Obviously, the Queen was largely displeased with Charles and Camilla back then. After Diana’s death, and after the death of the Queen Mum in 2002, I do think there was a thawing between Charles and the Queen, and a thawing between the Queen and Camilla. Reportedly, Camilla and the Queen get along quite well these days. They’re not BFFs or anything, but Camilla loves horses, dogs and day-drinking, so she has lots in common with the Queen. As far the Queen’s closest confidantes within the family… for years it’s been the Countess of Wessex and the Princess Royal. The Queen just prefers Anne’s company and Sophie’s company, and Camilla seems happy enough with her friendly – but not particularly close – relationship with the Queen.
Photos courtesy of WENN.
I’m with Her Majesty.
👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
Yep and I was thinking about Charles as king the other day (I must have been bored, or, once again, overly horrified by real news), his reign will likely attrition the royalty away. Then they can happily go off into the sunset – tampon and his woman.
That should have been the book title: “Tampon Prince.”
“Camilla loves horses, dogs and day-drinking” – not gonna lie, this kinda makes me wanna hang out with her and the Queen, I love all those things!
Same, Lala.
Don’t forget the brooches. Oh to get smashed day-drinking and play dress-up with the good stuff!
LoL me too
I was never a big fan of Diana.. I admired her Humanitarian work; but thought like most people she had 2 sides to her. Charles shouldn’t have married her. He was a coward. As far as Camilla goes.. when I see her with the Queen they seem very close to me. I think the Queen likes her. Maybe she didn’t at first.. But that is the case with many Mother and Daughter in -laws. Time has a way of putting things in perspective. I see how William and Harry are with her. They all look to have a genuine fondness. It speaks well of her that those young men care for her. I know some hate Camilla. I for one don’t. She knows her place in the family. And she handles it all very well. Not sure how many people would have been able to do that in the situation she was and is in.
Diana was 19 and she was gaslit and manipulated by a much older, more famous, and powerful man and his girlfriend. Charles and Camilla behaved despicably and it really doesn’t matter if Di had bi polar or other issues. That doesn’t mean they should be shunned for eternity but white washing their behavior to fit some narrative is just wrong. I completely understand where the Queen was coming from.
Even the suggestion of bipolar is itself part of the gaslighting. Bipolar is a serious disorder that doesn’t just go away by itself or with talk therapy. It’s pretty clear that in Dianas case her depression was triggered by her environment. If your older and far more powerful new husband “deflowers” you at your wedding night and then doesnt speak to you the following day, it will mess with you. Especially at 19. If you are then plunged into the world’s most critical gold fish bowl with no kind words of support or guidance from the guy who grew up in it, it will mess with you. If that same man then becomes angry that you have mastered the job so well that everyone forgets him, it will mess with you. And on and on and on.
I can’t sympathise with a man who would still see himself as the primary victim of a situation like this one.
Thank you! I think people forget how young and isolated Diana was when she entered into that marriage, she basically grew up and became a full adult under pretty stressful circumstances. Could she have handle things better? Most likely, if she were given the right tools and support. I’m sure she was petty, but she had a lot of reasons to be. Charles jealousy extending to his children is not surprising, since he was also jealous of the popularity of Diana. Good luck to him.
Diana certainly had her own issues but Charles didn’t love her when they married. I can’t imagine how she felt. She was young and adrift in a bad marriage from day one.
@Luca76. Agree. She makes Charles happy and has paid her dues in my opinion, but it doesn’t change the fact that as a grown woman in her thirties or forties she should have behaved better.
Amen, Luca. It was just evil, the way the two of them went about deliberately using and manipulating the young, inexperienced, and naive Diana to their own ends. It was as if what they were doing to her life meant absolutely nothing to them. She was 19, ffs.
In fairness, I’m not sure they were insinuating bipolar, just that she had two sides to her. Honestly, like a lot of people in the world, especially public people. This doesn’t mean a medical diagnosis.
As far as Charles, well I didn’t like him back then, but now with a lot of his environmental causes and his actions he seems alright to me. Certainly, much better than his time with Diana. Honestly, I never understood why Diana agreed to marry him. She seemed so vibrant, and he seemed like such a stick in the mud at least with her. His affair with Camilla was just gross on so many levels, I can understand the Queen’s reluctance. Now he still seems a bit stodgey but better. I think the tell all about him now is a bit crass, as it is does seem to be all 90’s crap we all kind of thought at the time anyway. Kind of reminds me of my feelings about the Trump affairs. What could these women have to say that the public hasn’t thought about him yet.
Diana was very multi-faceted, and some of those sides were not nice. Just like most people.
She did very very important work of course, but she also struggled a lot with mental health issues (that she was often prevented from dealing with) and took it out on those around her.
She loved attention and turning it onto herself, which is of course not unusual in humans. She loved playing the victim – but then, she was often a victim.
She loved her children, obviously, but did do a lot to poison them against their father. Who, obviously, was also a pretty bad father, so it’s hard to call that unfair.
The Sainting of her is weird and gross. Similar to JFK – the legend and the myth have now surpassed the real human.
It’s funny to me when people act as though the BRF hate Kate because she’s no Diana. No one wanted another Diana. Boring and Stepford is exactly what was needed.
Boring and Stepford is fine with the BRF. Lazy is not.
It absolutely is, laziness is their bread and butter! When someone tries to convince you how hard-working they are by listing off ribbons they’ve cut and times they’ve waved, you’re not looking at a bunch of work horses.
@Apple Hat “work” is relative. obviously they’re not digging ditches but it’s still work that the BRF does with these ribbon cuttings and it’s work that Kate has always fallen short of doing, work that you acknowledge isn’t hard.
As Argonaut writes, whether or not you think their work is valuable? They need the younger generation to step up and do it. Those bread and butter local engagements are what keep them in their positions. Stop doing those, you lose the support for the monarchy in the Home Counties (the main region that continues to be monarchists).
I agree that the “work” they do is not the same as the rest of us peasants. But what does it say about Kate’s laziness that she can barely even do that “work”. And William is just as bad. The only difference is he doesn’t get a new outfit every time he steps out of the palace.
Her own family failed Diana. But hey, she was going to be Queen Consort!
Totally agree, they should have warned her off but I guess they wanted to bask in the reflected glory.
He wanted a “suitable” royal wife. She wanted Prince Charles because he was the one man in the UK who could not legally divorce her. Or so she thought.
Her childhood was unhappy and thought the answer was Charles. She had issues. He had issues. Both had other expectations. I think what she needed no man could deliver and then chose one of the worst types for her. He needed a woman to fuss over him, and she was too young to be that. The list goes on and on.
A bad match from beginning to end.
Didn’t her grandmother, Lady Fermoy, try to warn her? She tried to tell her that that lifestyle wouldn’t suit her. Diana didn’t go to the altar against her will, she wanted this very badly. Apparently, Charles didn’t.
The marriage was arranged but no one told Diana, she expected a love match.
Lady Fermoy was matchmaker-in-chief. She was ecstatic that her granddaughter was marrying into the family. Later she admitted that she was aware of Diana’s mental issues, but didn’t warn the family and that was her personal regret.
…BUT Lady Fermoy was also a social climber who would always side with the higher status titled aristos over her own flesh and blood. Short of Diana being convicted of a crime, Fermoy was going to push her into that marriage if it killed her.
And surprise, surprise she sided with Charles when they divorced. Just as she sided with Earl Spencer over her own daughter.
Yes her own family conspired and pressured to marry the future ceremonial head of state. Only proves how strong the power differential was and how despicably Charles behaved.
@LAK, she also sided with Diana’s father against her mother (her own daughter!) in that divorce. Because of that, Diana’s mother lost custody of the kids.
We Cancerians can be headstrong and also so deeply emotionally connected to everything–by choice but usually not, mainly by being cardinal water signs that conduct everything–and wanting security plus seeing the potential in situations better left alone. Diana embodied this and truly the wounds of childhood especially if there is abandonment or disconnection means the Cancerian will spend their lives forever searching for that familial, parental warmth. No wonder she married the biggest symbol of the Patriarch she could find–with later hope to become the Queen, also a big symbol for Cancerian women–and an older, more fatherly figure at that. It’s also no wonder then that his rejection and manipulation of her caused deep depression that she battled through public works and via her children. Even her choice of charities speaks to the overall tendencies, especially tending to and supporting those injured in land mines–symbolically hidden locations of devastation mainly to poor and children–and HIV/AIDS. She aligned herself with the downtrodden to funnel that royal money into something good. Yes, she had her faults but the larger picture of how she was manipulated and hurt as a young woman cannot be downplayed.
I know she is a tragic figure, but I still think a good portion of her life was very happy. She loved her boys and her humanitarian causes. Which both boys try to keep up, one more than the other but still. Unfortunately, I think most people who marry into a royal family realize it is a lot more hard parts to it than you think. Plus it doesn’t help when your husband is in love with someone else. Still I bet she would have done it again as it let her do so much with her life.
I agree, I don’t care for Camilla or Charles’ actions, but they were obviously meant to be together.
…which doesn’t say much for either of them.
I agree. I think they’re quite close now and Harry and Will always seem fond of her.
Well said. I agree. I was never a big Diana fan but as she found herself after divorce and used her celebrity for the eradication of land minds she earned my respect. She was young when they married but she wanted to be a princess. She believed the fairytale seeming to forget really ugly things hide in fairy tales.
She & Charles were awful to each other and both did despicable things. Everyone who matters (Will, Harry etc) seem to have made their way with life and the past and that is all that matters.
Robert Fellows is married to Diana’s sister-so no surprise he wasn’t swayed by Charles’ whining.
Robert Fellowes was at the time the Queen’s Private Secretary and sided with the royals. It made things difficicult for Diana’s sister Jane, whose relationship with her younger sister became strained.
Robert Fellowes was not on Diana’s side during the break-up either. And he hated Fergie, despite the fact that she was his second cousin.
Off topic but I’ve been wanting to say this for weeks, QEII (in pictures) somehow seems more relaxed, engaged and just enjoying herself since Phil retired. It’s almost like she’s out kicking it with the girls—a single woman on the town. She’s attended fashion shows and hosted parties with only Anne and Sophie in attendance, laughing and talking without a Phil in sight. (Yes, I know that has happened before). Just enjoying herself with a new lease on life. You go girl😊.
Maybe she knows he’ll die soon and is as happy as the rest of us about it? One less abusive old racist around.
@Apple Hat do you honestly believe the queen will be HAPPY her husband of decades will die, or do you just think you’re being clever?
The Queen will be devastated when Phillip passes. I don’t think she’ll be dancing on his grave.
@Honey…that sort of crossed my mind too. Word has it that they led quite separate lives inside Buckingham Palace with Philip just pottering around doing his own thing, seemingly in a world of his own. It almost seems as if the Queen has packed him off to a ‘rest home’ in Windsor, and she can relax more and doesn’t have to worry about what he is getting up to.
I must say the Queen, while she has definitely aged and is much more ‘bent over’ certainly never looks tired, still rides her horses, and can climb stirs without assistance or a rail to hold at 92. Poor Charles.
@Princessk – agree they probably lead separate lives (in many ways extraordinary lives) but it’s no surprise old bat Liz is still rocking the stairs solo at 92: she has and has always had the best money can buy from nutrition to exercise to medical care; courtesy of the taxpayers of course!
Yesterday (or on Sunday), the DM had a piece on Charles, basically painting him as an spoiled brat… It was just unbelivable the level of entitleness reported… (At least, I hope most of it was not true). On Camilla, I actually like her, she seems nice and a fun chat. But I can see that the Queen would only think of her as the root of every PR problem in that decade.
I doubt the Queen thinks everything is Camilla’s fault and that Diana was a saint. She’s capable of seeing multiple sides of an issue.
She might see multiple sides, but she did very little about it. I guess her head-in-the-sand approach made life easier for her, but it didn’t do much to help her family.
Her own son is the origin of the problem. Charles has a lot of good qualities, but his first and foremost job was to get married and have an heir. He reluctantly married an undereducated and unexperienced teenager (that as has been said before, had a lot of faces and a troubled home life), and made a mess of everything, because he wasn’t able to let go of Camilla and just try to make the best of his marriage. But it is easier to “hate” and to put the fault in Camilla’s shoulders when its your son and his wife doing the mess. I do think that for a while Camilla just impersonated that horrible decade.
Diana didn’t go in to this marriage without her own vices, lying about herself (oh I love the countryside, etc.) to land the one man she thought could not divorce her. Too much Barbara Cartland.
HM does nothing until the height of the crisis, then puts her foot down. At the end of the day, the BRF moves on and HM has accepted Camilla.
Everything reporters write about Camilla is positive. Richard Palmer just wrote that she is the favorite royal of him and many other reporters because she always has time for a chat or a joke! I like her. I think she seems like she is a warm woman and a hoot!! She likes a drink, is great with old men during visits, likes dogs and horses, and reporters say that she will often walk along with them when they are all on the move.
Charles never should have married Diana. It was doomed from the start. He loved someone else, and Diana was completely inexperienced and naive and had her own struggles. She grew up in the glare of the media with a husband who loved another woman. We love who we love. The Queen was the one who screwed this all up.
Anyway, I think Charles and Camilla have always been soulmates and seem very happy and relaxed together.
They should’ve called the book “The Jealous Prince” — far more fitting.
As for trying to “Bring Camilla into the fold” a mere year after Diana’s death, well, what kind of reaction did he expect? An intelligent guy thoroughly lacking in common sense.
You can be book smart, and common sense dumb. I had a step-grandmother like that. Thought making soup was putting an unopened can in a pot of water or boil 😂. No joke.
Ha,ha!
He tried to bring her in before Diana’s death, and if she hadn’t died I doubt he would have gotten her in at all, that’s why so many people think the RF had something to do with it.
Diana was proving far too inconvenient, so she was removed.
I can believe that in the 90s, particularly the aftermath of Diana’s death, the Queen had no desire to see Camilla brought “into the fold.” If Charles had started living openly with Camilla less than a year after Diana had died, I think he would have been destroyed for it.
Anyway, this book sounds like some parts of it may be true, and some parts of it are over the top. Probably everything has a smidge of truth but is being played up for book sales. I believe Charles is jealous of the Middletons and their relationship with George and Charlotte, and I believe he is vaguely jealous of Will and Kate’s popularity(and now Harry and Meghan’s.) but I don’t think he is mad at them over it or anything, it seems like its probably more a “I wish I was more popular” kind of thing? Maybe? I don’t know. Charles will be King and he had to know that the Queen was NEVER going to skip him (even if she could.) Same way William is going to be king. I feel like it is a constant fan theory of Charles being skipped, William removing himself and his family from the line to the throne so Harry can be king, etc. And the reality is that none of that is going to happen.
(well I suppose there is a chance it could happen….but I don’t think its likely.)
I am very sure that Charles is not jealous of Harry and Meghan, my guess is that himself and Camilla are going to cultivate these two and hopefully forge a closer bond with them than what they have with William and Kate.
Charles actually made remarks about this when on walkabouts with Diana. Crowds would be disappointed they “got” him, asked for her, and he’d say something to the effect “Sorry you’re stuck with me” and then take it out on her.
He still has to be coddled and praised and mothered. Camilla obviously enjoys fulfilling that role and making him the center of everything. She must really love him, I couldn’t be married to that kind of guy for 10 minutes.
+1 Minx. Fortunately for her, she kept her house in Wiltshire as a bolt hole.
Minx: me too. There would blood on the floor after a day.
I think the tragedy of Diana is that she never found anyone to take care of her to the same degree because she really needed it. She was unlucky in her choices of partners, first in Charles and later others, but she also never matured to understand that about herself and to pick partners accordingly.
Maria–good for her!
Diana could have been happy with that heart surgeon but his family nixed the relationship. Xdiana thought Dodi would make him jealous and bring him back but life doesn’t work like that. Tina Brown talks about how Diana was beginning the process of forging a new life for herself, which included getting rid of Dodi. According to people I talk to Diana had become aware of Dodi’s cocaine use and was increasingly repulsed by him. Dodi could sense her pulling away and went to his father, desperate for advice. Dodi’s father has been twisting that narrative since the accident.
Shotcaller: By most accounts of that relationship, i don’t think so. He wasn’t willing to give up his life to attend to her every need and i don’t mean her famous life.
He was a much better pick than her usual types, but he was all wrong for her. In ways, she picked someone with similar traits like her unavailable father and Charles in love with someone else because the surgeon was completely obsessed with his work and she pursued him at every turn in that relationship. Just as she pursued her father and Charles. Another repeated pattern in her life of loving emotionally unobtainable people.
LAK
That’s a shame. I always thought he couldn’t stand up to his mother but I guess he himself didn’t want to commit. I liked the stories of her ironing his shirts or them making spaghetti dinners. Now that I think about it I guess she was trying to audition for the role of the good wife.
So agree with these posts. I loved hearing how Diana and Hasnat would get a bucket from KFC, he loved their fried chicken, and other ‘ordinary dates’ like how they would go to a jazz club. Its too bad Diana couldn’t have had that life, guess that is what William (& Harry?) was trying to create too?
Ah! Vintage Royal gossip. Those were days!
At the end of the day Charles got everything he wanted his side chick is his wife and will be queen, the woman he was forced to marry and that he never loved isn’t alive to ruin his life.
As for him trying to bring Cam in to the fold not even a full year after the mother of his kids has died. Charles didn’t care about her or respect her in life so why would he after she’s dead.
Most other news in the year before her death was Diana, Charles, and Camilla had made peace with each other. If Diana can move on, why can’t complete strangers? It is like people *believe* Charles cheated on them personally.
Yeah it’s not like the future King would benefit from a PR standpoint from people believing Diana was cool with his side chick or anything.
Saint Diana PR again? She was well on her way to being the next Fergie at the time of her death. She likely began to realize the error of some of her ways. That includes recognizing some of her own negative behavior, like the serial affairs and stalking of married men – and starting to have a speck of empathy in the direction of Charles and Camilla.
What about Camilla’s negative behaviour? I wonder if Camilla ever recognized that.
Maria: whether or not Camilla recognised this about herself, the public has punished her for it. In humiliating ways -chucking food at her and screaming abuse at her, and in fearful ways – she once stayed homebound for a year because she was afraid of the public.
She hasn’t always been confident about how she is received publicly. In 1999, her first official outing as a couple with Charles, she was visibly shaking.
The fact that she accepted his secondary title rather than the first as is her right shows an acknowledgement of that public censure even if it isn’t privately acknowledged.
Notasugarhere
Pot meet kettle. You may not like what Petty is saying but she has every right to say it without being dragged. You bring up Kate’s behavior from years ago as if it somehow ruined *your* life.
Merely expressing my opinion, just as she and you are doing.
I think it’s unlikely that the Queen was upset with the fact that Charles had committed adultery. She had put up with Phillip’s catting around for decades and she is from an aristocratic generation where that was acceptable. I think she was more upset that Charles was so messy about it that it resulted in divorce and an ongoing public feud with Diana.
This. The Queen is pretty practical and is always thinking of The Firm. I doubt she cared much about Camilla, The Person, just what it would mean PR-wise.
Much closer to the truth.
It was about appearances.
This is nothing more than an engineered hit job by a disgruntled former employee. It is rehashed things Diana put forth, some truths and some wish fulfillment.
The poor Diana nonsense needs to be put to rest.
ITA – TQ has never been happy about family business being aired in public and thats why she basically ordered them to get divorce, although the story is Diana didn’t want a divorce – she just wanted to shame Charles into coming back to her but she overplayed her cards and it blew up in her face.
As others have said no one came out of this smelling of roses. No one.
By the time she spoke to Andrew Morton she had no more fs to give. By that point she had directly confronted Charles and Camilla in the basement of some birthday party. He had responded like she was in the wrong for doing so. She had also already told the queen. She had also basically been surplanted at High Grove and her own staff urged her to remain in Kensington Palace. Her problem was that upto that point the only royal to divorce in like 5 centuries had been Margaret and she was not the mother of the future King. She knew she would be villified if she filed while 90% of the world thought she had a sweet deal and I am sure she worried about what it would mean for her access to the children. I think thats why she made sure to completely obliterate the false happy marriage image and to explain her side. I dont believe for one second that anybody sane or otherwise would describe a husbands indifference to her suicidal ideation to the entire world but expect a real marriage to fruit from there.
Ain’t that the truth!
Anne divorced messily several years before Diana spoke to Morton. Her then husband had fathered a child and his baby mama wasn’t going to be ignored or silenced by the BRF.
The same year as Diana’s Morton book, Anne had a *messy affair then married her second husband, but that was overshadowed by Diana’s headlines.
*her affair with hubby no 2 started when she was still very married to Hubby no 1 who was having affairs of his own that culminated in the aforementioned baby.
I forgot about Anne. But again, Anne was not mother to the future King. Or ever reasonably close to the crown given that she has three brothers. She was in a similar position as Margaret. Also, I think you are mistaken. Anne divorced in 1992, the same year the Andrew Morton book came out. She also remarried in the same year,
The separation was a few years earlier though and as I recall, she was widely painted as the victim despite her leaked letters. Of course this was before I knew to read past the PR sell but I remember we all thought that Phillips was a cruel orgre and thank god she finally escaped his claws. Her adultery was regarded as his fault somehow. I’ll google for the archived stories.
No one did. Looking past Diana’s marriage to Charles she was behaving in very questionable ways, and I do wonder had she lived would this martyred idea of a real, flawed woman would have persisted? I don’t think so.
And of course, there are other interpretations about their marriage depending on the source. However, at the end of her life, she and Charles got along. She’s from that class, and they don’t hold affairs in the same light as most people.
That is what their sons saw at the end while everyone else remembers the earlier part of their divorce and the miserable marriage. I wish I could recall what I read years ago about that time in their relationship. I do remember there were no hard feelings. She had been to therapy and was in love with someone else.
Magnoliarose: The fact that Charles and Diana were friends at the end is often forgotten.
Granted Diana did stunt Queen her holiday photos the day Charles threw an equally public birthday party for Camilla which ensured she was headline news rather than the party.
And that is all most people remember.
She didn’t appear to pitch a fit when Anne was outed on the cover of People magazine for having a four year extra marital affair with a member of HM’s staff. She divorced her husband, married the employee, and the House of Windsor didn’t fall down. I think HM learned a lot of lessons watching Margaret disintegrate.
I don’t know how any of this matter when the two did get married? Them keeping their relationship a secret forever could the one and only thing that could have been a proper snub. As it is, Diana is dead and Charles has married his mistress.
Do you have as much sympathy for all the wives of the men who had affairs with Diana? Seeing as she targeted married men at least three times.
It was the former Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, who urged Charles to marry Camilla. Went on record about it. A couple of the things he said about the situation?
“Diana was a very fallible lady and very angry about the relationship and yes, I do believe, on balance, that she was a little more cunning at using the media than Charles.”
“Christian faith is all about forgiveness. We all make mistakes. Failure is part of the human condition and there is no doubt that there has been a strong loving relationship, probably since they were very young, that has endured over the years.”
Yes, people forget about her affair with the very married Will Carling (England rugby player) that resulted in the end of his marriage and Diana was named by the wife as being the reason why – she outed their affair to the press, told the world that Diana ruined her marriage.
@nota…so it’s Diana’s fault, not that of the husbands. They were the ones who promised to love, forsake all others and all that rot but Diana alone broke up these marriages. Along those lines, it was clearly Camilla’s fault that Charles cheated.
Humans, not saints, Diana included.
If Diana had such a problem with Charles cheating, why did she only go after Camilla while befriending the others? If she had such a problem with extra martial affairs, why did she initiate so many of them while she or her target were still married? She was human, not a saint. And often, she wasn’t a very nice human.
Reads much like the idea that William acts like he does because of (only) Charles’s behavior. If William had such a problem with cheating, he wouldn’t have cheated on a dumped Kate Middleton multiple times. William’s problem is how his life was negatively impacted by other people’s behavior, not the idea of infidelity itself.
I’m an atheist and a lover of history and facts, so as much as I appreciate the kindness of this particular head of the Church, Christians do not exactly practice what they preach. The things that were done in the world in the name of Christ will make any educated person cringe.
As far as Camilla, it was Charles who was responsible for his marriage and answerable to Diana. Camilla was answerable to her husband, not Diana.
I don’t think the Queen cares one way or the other. It’s just that there’s no point in posing and pretending if you are going to give a consent for their marriage. Clearly, she is okay with it at this point and why not? It’s an old old story.
I think people formed their opinions about Diana based on age and generation. I don’t remember her with Charles. I was too young. My memories of her are as a single woman, so the Charles-Camilla gossip for me is all hindsight. All the things I heard were less worshipful of her, and I didn’t grow up with the larger than life perfect idea of Diana.
I am also newly interested in them more than just mild fascination lately; therefore I don’t have a bias against Charles. I think he is mistreated and made into a villain when that doesn’t seem to be the case. Flawed for sure but it seems overdone often.
If Diana had such a problem with Charles cheating, why did she only go after Camilla while befriending the others?
Diana sensed Camilla was a real threat to her marriage and the others weren’t…I don’t really know, Diana never called me up to explain the situation. But Diana did not break up any marriages, the men who cheated on their wives did the breaking. And how in the world did William get dragged into this thread?
He was, and still is, in love with her. *That* is the difference.
Diana’s constant pursuit of married men is supposed to be absolved here? If she thought infidelity was the worst sin, she wouldn’t have pursued married men.
People often excuse William’s attitude/laziness as acting out against Charles for his adultery, when in reality William has no problem with cheating himself. Folks need to pick another excuse.
My impression is the Queen Mother was fiercely opposed to the union between Charles and Camilla and made the Queen promise that she would never accept her.
Once she passed in 2002, the Queen relaxed her attitude and began to accept her.
Talk about a dysfunctional family! Wow!
Hugely dysfunctional. I mean, think of the reason that Camilla couldn’t have married Charles (according to their rules) in the first place.
The QM was busy allowing her homes to be used for CC assignations. What she objected to was the PR aspect of parading your mistress publicly. To that end she wouldn’t allow a marriage and they had to wait until her death for that to happen.
All of them objected to the very public parading of these affairs NOT the actual affairs.
And btw, Camilla wasn’t the only affair he had. Just the only one Diana objected to. And it was Diana who outed them to the public.
Until Diana outed them, no one knew about Camilla. She was publicly there in all the photos and the public didn’t notice.
@LAK I do remember Camilla’s name being mentioned along with Dale Tryon back in the mid-eighties. Morton’s book came later. By that time Diana had allied herself along with Dale against Charles, since she had been dumped by Charles in favour of Camilla.
That the Queen Mum tacitly agreed/enable the relationship (albeit behind closed doors)? Could be why Charles gave Camilla the QM’s massive emerald cut diamond ring as an engagement ring.
Nota: Behind closed doors, the QM didn’t mind and allowed them to use her homes.
Maria: this entire business of Camilla being his one true love is rubbish because he met and started an affair with Kanga a few months after he met Camilla. He carried on with both of them for the next decade.
Everything thrown at Camilla is equally true of Kanga. And yes, she was at the royal wedding too.
I firmly believe that if Kanga hadn’t become ill, she would have seen off Camilla because as indiscreet as she was, Charles kept seeing her. Her illness made her a security risk, but she knew how to keep Charles’s attention.
Diana was outmatched on this front, and given the way she conducted her other affairs never learnt any lessons from Kanga or her girlfriends. She was stuck in her Barbara Cartland view of romantic relationships that are only good for 13yr olds who can’t progress beyond a chaste kiss.
I don’t think HM hated Camilla, but she very likely detested the situation. As for Diana, she said we don’t know if Charles will become King. She added that she felt Charles would have trouble with being King given his character and remember Diana was still married to Charles at the time of the Panorama interview so there was a lot of fighting behind the scenes. IMO, Camilla feels more comfortable with her father-in-law Philip yet Philip stood up for Diana to a large extent. Complex situation indeed.
If you look at photos of Charles and Camilla exiting their wedding blessing? HM is right behind them beaming.
And yet, HM skipped the civil ceremony.
HM skipped the civil ceremony for PR reasons. It’s forgotten now, but there was a brouhaha over this wedding. Not so much the engagement which though headline news wasn’t as excitedly greeted.
As the wedding drew nearer, media went into overdrive about what it meant, constitutional experts, diana fans, CoE offivials, Wedding venue experts, divorce experts etc. Juxtaposed with HM potentially making a wrong step constitutionally as head of CoE and other opinions.
HM skipping the civil wedding was the compromise as long as she attended the blessing and hosted the wedding reception.
The chapter on the Middletons read like every article that’s ever been written about Charles vs the Middletons. Or commentary on royal forums.
This chapter about Charles + Camilla vs the Queen is pure fanfiction. There are nuggets of truth, but it is almost completely fanfiction.
This is such a weird read. Did he have cameras in the room or something? I honestly doubt that many people truly know what the Queen thinks of certain situations or people privately. Whatever she does is driven by her sense of duty and by pracicality. I think people forget sometimes how much of a sh*tsho the 90s were for the BRF and Liz knew that most of it was caused by Chuck, Cam, and Diana. Whoever you want to blame in the end, they all caused that drama together and it was the drama and susequent death of Diana that truly shook the institution. She must’ve detested all of it. I have no idea if she’s as petty as I am but if that had been me and my son came to me after f*cking up this badly, wanting to hurry up and make his side piece his official partner? These two really are the only ones with a happy ending, after making a mess of things. I’d tell him to wait just because.
So far this book is my favorite thing gossip wise about 2018. All I need is QE2 drunk on Martinis.
On the news this morning as I was getting ready for work, I heard the newsperson say “is next in line to the throne”, I missed the first part of it. I thought maybe the Queen was sick, near death, or maybe Charles is sick, etc. The first thing I did was check CB and I’m not only relieved it’s just gossip they were repeating, but very juicy gossip at that (apparently it’s a slow news day here). LOL I love Chuck/Di/Camilla gossip, takes me back to my youth.
I would like to know what it was about Camilla that Diana hated so much, while not hating his other mistresses.
Charles was/is in love with Cam that made her different from the rest.
He was equally in love with Kanga which left Camilla very insecure.
Don’t you just love they way they have trawled through the archives to find the grumpiest photos of HM? 🙂
And isn’t it amazing how many of these “private conversations” get reported
Maybe The Queen just doesn’t light up when Camilla’s around. Or she suddenly realized what a bunch of twits she raised.
Actually if she had done a little more actual raising herself it may have saved some of the later problems.
I still hate her. Lol!
Always team Diana but Charles talked to the Queen in 1998 , Diana died in 1997 so I don’t think he approached the Queen about accepting Camilla until after Diana died.
I decided Camilla was kind of unlikable after I had read an excerpt that recounted how Diana had said she’d like to make her marriage work, and Camilla retorted that she should be happy with her fame and all the men falling at her feet. Er, you’re kind of missing the point, Camilla. If I were the Queen, I wouldn’t have wanted to deal with someone with her logic either. If I were Diana, that kind of argument coming from the other woman would drive me insane. I’d want to keep my husband just to prove a point! (I don’t care how petty that sounds).
Diana had some unlikable qualities too, but the unlikable qualities on her end still don’t cancel out Camilla’s unlikable qualities either, imo. I think Camilla was every bit as weird as Diana could be. Of course, I also think Charles is a little weird for not recognizing the same faults in Camilla as he might have seen in Diana.
Maybe Andrew Parker Bowles’s infidelity psychologically impacted Camilla in the same way Charles’s infidelity impacted Diana and they both turned out entitled to other wives’s men because of it. Still, I don’t think Diana’s crazy moments cancel out Camilla’s. I just think Camilla hid it better.
Have we any proof that Camilla actually said this?
I think I read this in Tina Brown’s book, I believe. Whether this is actually 100 percent true, I don’t know, as I don’t live inside the household. I don’t know if any of the stuff from any of these books is 100 percent true. Allegedly, Camilla said this to Diana at a party that Charles and Camilla’s friends were invited to. It was after this confrontation and Charles’s reaction to Diana being at the party that Diana felt her marriage was dead.
All I know is I came away with a dislike of Camilla after reading Tina Brown’s book. I think this particular piece of gossip might have been repeated in British newspapers as well. The articles can probably be found online.
Obviously any perceptions I have of these people would come from reading books about them or from gossip I’ve read online as I do not claim to be an aristocrat that mixes in these circles.
To add, I think this may have also been recounted by Diana herself. It’s probably on the Diana tapes. Maybe Youtube has the excerpt up.
So many books have been written about all of these people over the years that I think the sources start to bleed into each other.
I have read Tina Brown’s book and found it to be the best and most credible account of Diana’s life.
Their entire social set are cheaters in marriage. Fidelity is only required long enough to have an heir and spare. That’s the only time it is unacceptable to cheat in their circle. All other times are OK. Everyone, Diana included, indulged in this behaviour. Cheating doesn’t mean the end of marriage.
Diana, in her own words, was obsessed with Camilla. She’s the only one of Charles’s mistresses she objected to. And at her lowest ebb, she lashed out and publicly named her which didn’t go the way she wanted because that definitely set the path to divorce and eventual end of her marriage whilst everyone else settled back to their normalised bedhopping world.
“Their entire social set are cheaters in marriage”
I don’t doubt that. But in the end, Diana was Charles’s wife. And if she objected to Camilla, which she had the right to do, I do think the reason Camilla gave for why Diana should be happy with the current state of affairs was kind of lame. The particular reasoning she used struck me as completely un-empathetic. I also think sometimes feelings can’t be controlled, which is what happened in Diana’s case. Going into the marriage, she might have had some inkling that Charles could cheat. But the reality of dealing with the situation was probably something different than what she expected. And even if cheating is expected, I think she had a right to save her marriage in the terms she saw fit (having her husband leave the woman she didn’t particularly like and telling the lady that in no uncertain terms).. The fact that Camilla seemed to imply that Diana need not save her marriage because she was famous, had two cute children, and had men coming after her was probably as annoying to Diana as it is to me. Ultimately, I believe Diana had a right to save her marriage, even if she had some incredible weaknesses.
Camilla doesn’t strike me as any less entitled than the rest of these people, imo. If the Queen didn’t want to deal with her, I can see why. She strikes me as no different than the rest of them in wanting what she wanted when she wanted it.
I also think Diana did some wrong things, but that doesn’t cancel out Camilla’s wrong-doing, imo.
Perplexed: …but at the point of that conversation, Diana was already two down with her own lovers and as she told us in that Panorama interview, she was deeply in love with one of those livers so she reframed her intentions to cause maximum damage as was her habit in her war with CC to claim that her conversation with Camilla was an attempt to save her marriage.
Several years down the line, a newly wed wife had a similar conversation with Diana which she ignored and that marriage ended with Diana named as the person who came between the couple.
A case of Diana deliberately reframing events to make herself look as much of a victim as possible whilst indulging in the same behaviour and being absolved by her sympathisers.
LAK your point is moot and many people pointed it out already but you’re determined to pit Diana’s actions first and front. If A person is an abuser, for example and B confronts them and exposes their abuse, the suggestion that at some point B may or has abused too, does not negate the fact that what A did is plain wrong. That’s all. No matter how you twist it, what Diana did or not does not in any way negate the wrongfulness of Camilla’s actions. Simple.
Anyone else find it funny that as they remove all mention of Camilla being princess consort, leaving it open to speculation that Charles intends to make her queen, Charles and Camilla are being gaslite? Nice try changing the narrative. I don’t think the press or the public is forgetting who got gaslite first at the age of 19. Karma.
I feel sorry for Charles. Did he make a mistake in marrying Diana? Yes. Should he have waited to get it back on with Camilla until his marriage had ended properly? Yes.
However, it’s clear that Cam and Charles were meant to be. Plus, I’ll say this again and again, I can’t feel sorry for Diana being jolted when she was willing to be the “other woman” in at least two other couple’s marriages. You can’t play the victim when you’re willing to do it yourself.
Where is the proof of this ‘Diana went after married men’? Does anyone have any actual proof? And not tabloid gossip? As a couple of Royal Secretaries/staffers said (I believe Burrell was one), if she actually had affairs with every single man she was linked with, she’d never have time to eat or sleep. If she was photographed at a dinner with a man, whether for charity or whatnot, or even in the same room as another famous man, she was accused of chasing him.