Over the past 30 years, she has gone from being the “most hated woman in the UK” to the secret weapon of the Windsor house
It has not been the princess of the city. But he has undoubtedly been the fairy tale in which love finally triumphed. Camila, now Queen Consort of the United Kingdom, has grown over the past 30 years from the witch of the story to the secret weapon of the Windsor house, one of the most tireless workers, and the anchor that provides stability, confidence and equality. to the current monarch.
That her appointment as queen consort at the ‘sincere wish’ of the late Elizabeth II caused little controversy in the same country that vilified and ridiculed her just three decades ago says a lot about how things have changed in the UK. British tabloids also have a new “bad” to fill their pages with, as Prince Henry’s wife Meghan Markle well knows.
Princess Diana, the first wife of the then Prince of Wales, called her ‘the Rottweiler’. The Queen began to call herself “that bad woman.” The yellow press called her “the most hated woman in the UK” after the death of the glamorous Lady Di, ascended to heaven by a country that adored her. No one, in this country so fond of gambling, would have bet a penny that she would become queen today.
However, Camila not only managed to win the favor of the public, but also managed to soften the image of the current monarch in the eyes of the British. As his biographer, journalist Angela Levin, explained in an interview with ‘Town & Country’, “Before he could be with Camila in public, Carlos was an unhappy soul because he had no support.” Whoever was accused of turning the monarchy upside down could finally become its savior.
Those who have treated her closely describe a woman with her feet on the ground, with a rural soul, jovial, discreet and hardworking. Camilla Shand, the daughter of an army major turned wine merchant and an aristocratic mother, spent her childhood in a beautiful country house in South East England, doing what well-to-do girls of the British aristocracy did then: hunt and ride horses.
Educated at the elite Queen’s Gate School in London’s South Kensington, Camila was a confident teenager, not very studious but a great reader and “with an appeal and a confidence that I envied more than anything else. She was one of those people.” who knows what she wants and who knows she will succeed in life,” as a former classmate describes in Gyles Brandreth’s book “Charles and Camilla.”
Without many career ambitions, Camila was sent to a Swiss boarding school that specialized in etiquette and creating the perfect high-society housewife. But Camila, like any teenager, loved to have fun. She was fired from one of her first jobs as a secretary for being late after a night of partying.
Carlos and Camila met in 1971. She had an on-again, off-again relationship with Andrew Parker-Bowles, an army officer with a reputation for being heartbreaking. In one of their breakups, in which Parker-Bowles tried to court Anne, Charles’ sister, the Prince of Wales and Camilla, they became friends. According to the legend, during that first meeting, Camila released him, spitefully and seductively: «My great-grandmother was your great-grandfather’s lover. What do you say?” True or not, the friendship quickly turned into romance.
In 1973, Carlos left the Navy to continue his military training and the relationship cooled. That same year, Camila accepted Parker-Bowles’s marriage proposal, leaving the young prince in despair. “I suppose this sense of emptiness will disappear with time,” he then confessed to his great-uncle and mentor, Lord Mountbatten. It wasn’t.
Much has been written about why, if they were in love, then they didn’t take the step to get married. Some point out that Carlos didn’t want to get married until the age of 30, and she decided not to wait. Others, that different members of the royal family had their own candidates for Princess of Wales and that they maneuvered so that the story of Carlos and Camila did not continue.
But one reason trumps all else: Camila had blue blood, but she also had a “past.” I mean, she wasn’t a virgin. And in a society as hypocritical and rancid as the British aristocracy, premarital sex was forbidden for them. The advice from Mountbatten, the same one who had set up an equestrian center in Hampshire for Carlos to take his friends with, and who had encouraged him to “throw a can” before settling down, was clear: “Find a girl with a sweet character to put her on a pedestal and marry her,” said biographer Sally Bedell Smith. That girl was Diana Spencer, and the marriage – it’s no secret – was a disaster.
Carlos and Camila had remained friends, and by the time of the wedding with Diana, the affair between the former lovers, some of their biographers say, had started again. The now queen consort already had two children, Tom and Laura, and an unfaithful husband. On the same honeymoon, Diana found some photos of Camila in her new husband’s book and the two got into an argument when she discovered that the two intertwined C’s of her husband’s twins stood for “Carlos and Camila”.
Diana even confronted Camila at a birthday party in 1989. “I know what’s going on,” she told her. “Don’t treat me like an idiot.” But the marriage, the marriage in which Diana said in her famous interview with Andrew Morton there had been three, broke up in 1992. Camila and Andrew divorced in 1995.
A year after Carlos’ divorce, a bomb exploded in the British tabloid press. The transcript of an intimate telephone conversation between Carlos and Camila, in which the Prince of Wales confessed that he would like to live in his lover’s pants and reincarnate in his tampon, ended up in black and white in the press around the world.
The conversation revealed much more, first of all, the deep love they professed, and Camila’s constant support for a hugely unhappy Carlos in his marriage. But almost all that happened then was the spicy details. Carlos was ridiculed and the press found what they were looking for: a villain to hate.
The “Camillagate,” as the press called the revelations, and the harassment she was subjected to, was enormous. “It’s hard. I was scrutinized for so long that you eventually have to find a way to live with it. Nobody likes to be constantly looked at and criticized … », he admitted in an interview with ‘Vogue’ magazine last July, on the occasion of his 75th birthday. “But I think I managed to get to the top and get over it. You have to get on with your life.”
Diana’s tragic death in 1997 has re-activated the media hunt for Camila. But the relationship with Carlos grew stronger every day and the prince managed to assert his will, towards his family and towards the British, to spend the rest of his days with what had been his true love. The couple’s appearances, shy at first, became more and more frequent. The Queen and the rest of the family had accepted her. They got married in 2005.
“No one doubted that they loved each other,” says journalist Jonathan Dimbledy in his authorized biography of Carlos. “In Camila Parker-Bowles, the Prince found the warmth, understanding and stability he had always wanted and could not find in anyone else.”
Source: La Verdad
I am an experienced and passionate journalist with a strong track record in news website reporting. I specialize in technology coverage, breaking stories on the latest developments and trends from around the world. Working for Today Times Live has given me the opportunity to write thought-provoking pieces that have caught the attention of many readers.
