In 2004, author and playwright Kate Mosse was at a party for food writer Tom Parker Bowles. “I remember standing in the queue for the loo with an incredibly nice woman who had a rather deep and infectious laugh, and we had a bit of a chat. It was the women’s locker-room moment,” Mosse told Penny Junor, author of The Duchess: Camilla Parker Bowles and the Love Affair That Rocked the Crown. It was only later in the evening that she learned the mystery woman who was a “complete hoot” was none other than Tom’s mother, the notorious Camilla Parker Bowles.  

Mosse’s reaction to Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, is typical of those who actually meet her. “She has a delightful personality. She’s very approachable, very easy to talk to, warm, friendly, funny,” Junor, a journalist who has written numerous books on the royals, including The Duchess, which is the only serious biography of Camilla, tells Vanity Fair. “She always has a twinkle in her eye and is a terrible giggler, often reducing Charles to fits of giggles too.”

Whether she’s giggling with Prince William, slyly winking at photographers during Donald Trump’s 2019 visit to England, playing or laughing after a bee flew into Prince Harry’s hair, Camilla often seems to be having the most fun in the room. She is also self-deprecating. According to Junor, when the late actor Elaine Stritch told her, “No bullshit, you look great,” Camilla replied, “You need eyeglasses.”

Once reviled as the “most hated woman in Britain,” Camilla has proved herself to be much more than the “third person” in the marriage of Prince Charles and Princess Diana. Confident and breezy, she loves the competitive dance show Strictly Come Dancing; her rescue Jack Russell terriers, Bluebell and Beth; and Charles, the future king of England. Now, as talk of succession looms, the real question is: Does the British public love Camilla enough to accept her as its queen? 

Camilla Rosemary Shand was born on July 17, 1947, in London. Unlike Charles and Diana, the thoroughly upper-class Camilla had an extraordinarily boisterous and joyful childhood. Raised primarily in the East Sussex countryside, she was extremely close to her siblings and parents, Bruce and Rosalind, who (atypical for the time) were hands-on parents. “As a little girl she marched happily into school without looking back,” Junor writes in The Duchess. “She galloped her pony and flew over jumps without an anxious thought. She charged into the sea and laughed at the waves.”

An indifferent student, Camilla was fun-loving, athletic, and unambitious. “She couldn’t have been less interested in the idea of a career. She wasn’t itching to travel...and had no desire to go to university,” Junor writes in The Duchess. “She wanted no more from life than to be happily married to an upper-class man and live a sociable life in the country with horses, dogs, children, and someone to look after them all and do the hard graft.”

This ambition was not deterred when she met Charles in the summer of 1971. Although, according to Junor, there was an instant attraction, especially on the part of the awkward Prince of Wales. “Charles loved that Camilla smiled with her eyes as well as her mouth, and laughed at the same silly things he did,” Junor writes. 

The two started dating, and Charles later described the relationship as “blissful, peaceful, and mutually happy.” Outside forces, however, were pulling them apart. According to Junor, Charles’s great-uncle and surrogate father, Lord Mountbatten, disapproved of the relationship, since Camilla was not a virgin, nor aristocratic enough. There was also the fact that Camilla was head over heels in love with the dashing, sophisticated Army Calvary officer Andrew Parker Bowles, who had a reputation as a womanizer and reportedly dated Princess Anne for a time. 

A determined Camilla finally snagged Andrew, and they married in July 1973, despite Charles’s pleas to cancel the wedding. They had two children, Tom and Laura, and Camilla settled into the role she had always wanted, that of a country wife and mother. 

Camilla’s warmhearted nature, however, was supremely tested by Andrew’s dismissive attitude and constant philandering. According to Junor, Andrew’s infidelity was so well known that one friend once teased him: “I’m really hurt, Andrew. I’m the only one of Camilla’s friends you haven’t made a pass at. What’s wrong with me?”

Soon, Charles was back in her life as a best friend and by the late 1970s, as a lover. The lonely prince was often a guest at the Parker Bowles’s home, where Camilla hosted warm, wine-filled parties. “She treated him like a normal person, as she had when they were together, and if ever he behaved badly, or was selfish or thoughtless, she wasn’t afraid to tell him so,” Junor writes in The Duchess. “She was a proper friend.”

This gift for friendship seems to have been what reignited her affair with the Prince of Wales in the mid-1980s. “He was in the depth of depression when his marriage was failing, and she pulled him out of that and made him laugh again,” Junor says. 

With the publication of Andrew Morton’s Diana, Her True Story in 1992, Camilla’s private world was upended. She was stalked by the press, taunted with hate mail, and dismissed as ugly when compared with the beautiful Diana. So why did she stick around with Charles? The answer may be simple: Charles worshipped her and needed her. As she once told a friend, per Junor, “It’s wonderful to be loved.”

After both were divorced, the palace went to work to slowly introduce Camilla to the public. “Before she married Charles, no one really knew Camilla. They only knew that Diana had called her a rottweiler,” Junor says. 

But by the time they married at Windsor Castle on April 9, 2005, it seemed public sentiment was shifting. “Camilla had been public enemy number one for much of the 1990s after Diana named her the third person in the marriage,” Junor says. “But by the time she and Charles married, I think some people’s attitudes were beginning to soften, and the reception they had from the crowds in Windsor on the day of the wedding was almost entirely positive.”

Revealing her strength and smarts, the newly styled Duchess of Cornwall seems to have made a conscious effort to woo the very press that made her life hell for over a decade. “As soon as she was married, she was seen out and about with Charles, and when people met her, they were surprised by how warm and friendly and funny she was,” Junor says. “They liked her. And because she was friendly to the press and helpful to photographers, they wrote friendly things about her and published good photographs, and gradually the public’s view of her changed.”

The easy, loving relationship between Camilla and Charles was also evident during their public appearances, a far cry from Charles and Diana’s strained final outings. After a trip to Papua New Guinea in 2012, Charles’s pride was evident when he spoke of her in an interview for the documentary Our Queen. “She loved it, and I hope they found out just how special she is. And I think they very much responded to her just being jolly good and down to earth.”

According to palace staff, Camilla also makes working for Charles, whose petulance and tantrums are legendary, easier. “She would be sitting at the table listening to him behave badly and all she would have to do is look at him and the whole atmosphere would change,” one staffer told Junor in The Duchess.

“I think Camilla has transformed Charles,” Junor says. “He is happier with her than he has ever been. She gives him confidence and the support he has so desperately needed throughout his life and never truly found elsewhere.”

Camilla has also proved herself to be a very hard worker, and a secret weapon for a monarchy low on top-tier royals available for public service. She is now the patron of more than 90 charities and has a camaraderie with the public few other royals can claim. “She is very chatty with the public and makes them feel instantly at ease, often making a joke or telling them, for example, that her feet are killing her—the normal sort of exchanges that normal people have, that I think most people find endearing,” Junor says.

She is also willing to get her hands dirty. In November 2021, Catherine Johnstone, commander of the order of the British empire and chief executive of Royal Voluntary Services (of which Camilla is president), told Hello about a time Camilla was serving meals at one of its lunch clubs. “One of the older diners with sight issues asked whether the Duchess would cut up her food,” Johnstone said. “Her Royal Highness immediately started cutting up her meal without hesitation.”

Camilla’s choice of patronages has also shown her not to be the blithe country gal she often seemed to be. She has highlighted the often-taboo subjects of domestic violence, sexual assault, and rape. In October 2021, she gave a remarkably pointed speech on sexual violence at the WOW Foundation’s Shameless! Festival in London, where her words were blunt: 

"Rapists are not born, they are constructed. And it takes an entire community–male and female–to dismantle the lies, words, and actions that foster a culture in which sexual assault is seen as normal, and in which it shames the victim," she told the gathering. "So let us all leave here today and try and get the men in our lives to participate in building a 'shameless' society."

Not that the duchess is without faults; she is said to be very stubborn, and tough on people she doesn’t like. Sometimes Camilla’s irreverent humor can also get her into trouble. In 2017, she and Charles were panned as culturally insensitive after they couldn’t stop giggling during a performance of Inuit throat singers in Canada. She is a terrible gossip, notes Junor in her book, making the rumor that she told anyone who would listen that President Joe Biden had passed gas during a reception at the 2021 climate change summit entirely believable. 

Perhaps the hardest people for Camilla to win over have been the members of royal family. “The queen didn’t want Camilla around in the early days because their relationship was so damaging to the monarchy, but on a personal level, she has always liked Camilla,” Junor says. “They have a lot in common, particularly their love of dogs and horses. And I think she is friendly enough with other members of the family and gets on well with William and Kate. It was initially difficult for both William and Harry, but Camilla let them take their time.”

But no matter what his family thinks, Charles’s love for Camilla is evident in their 2021 Christmas card, which shows the Prince of Wales tenderly helping his wife put on her mask at Ascot. He also desperately wants her to be given the title "Queen" upon his accession, which, according to rumor, William and Harry oppose. "Privately, I discovered both brothers are absolutely sick to the back teeth of Charles trying to negotiate full Queen status for Camilla," royal biographer Robert Lacey told Newsweek in November. 

It seems the public, saturated with romanticized Diana content in the past year, agrees with the princes. According to a YouGov poll conducted in Britain in May 2021, only 13% of the public believes Camilla should be titled “Queen,” with 41% opting for the lesser title of “Princess Consort.” She could also be called "Queen Consort," which is the title typically given to the wife of a U.K. king.

So, what does Camilla want? “I don’t think she wants to think about it. She is very good at putting her head in the sand,” Junor says. “My guess is she will be queen. I don’t think Charles would want her to be called anything else. He is immensely proud of her and grateful to her for everything she has sacrificed for him.”

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