Decades ago, the British public knew Camilla as Charles’ mistress, the other woman whom Princess Diana referred to during her bombshell 1995 “Panorama” interview. When Camilla finally married Charles in 2005, Queen Elizabeth II announced that she would be known as “Princess Consort” when Charles became king.
However, months before Elizabeth’s death in 2022, she announced that Camilla would be “Queen Consort” when the time came. Soon, Camilla will simply be known as queen, and royal experts believe she played her cards perfectly to get to this moment, according to The Washington Post.
Charles and Camilla first met in 1970, and they hit it off immediately, bonding over their mutual love of horses and hunting. However, their relationship was doomed from the start because it was unheard of for a senior royal, especially the future king, to marry a woman who was not a virgin.
Charles and Camilla began their first affair in 1979, shortly after the Irish Republican Army assassinated Charles’ great-uncle Louis Mountbatten. Their affair came to an end in 1981 after Charles and Diana announced their engagement.
Diana discovered love letters between Charles and Camilla on their honeymoon, as well as cuff links with two intertwined C’s that Camilla had given the prince. By 1986, Diana and Charles’ marriage had collapsed, and that same year, Charles wrote in a letter that he felt as if he were “in a kind of cage…longing to be free.” Two of Charles and Camilla’s mutual friends urged her to reach out to him, and their friendship soon rekindled, as did their affair, BBC’s History Extra.
Charles and Camilla’s relationship became public knowledge in June 1992 after Andrew Morton’s bombshell biography of Diana was published. Conversations between Charles and Camilla that had been taped in 1989 and leaked to the press were published in 1993.
Known as “Camillagate,” the tapes were a humiliating moment for the royal family and turned Camilla into the British tabloids’ newest villain. Despite the obstacles they faced, Camilla’s patience and perseverance paid off, and she will soon be crowned Queen Camilla.