Charles and Camilla: The affair that rocked the royals and ended on the throne

It was a relationship that, for decades, played out in the shadows. The story is said to have begun at a polo match at Windsor Great Park in the early 1970s, where a confident young Camilla Shand reportedly joked to the future king, “My great-grandmother was the mistress of your great-great-grandfather. I feel we have something in common.”

An instant connection was forged, but royal life, as playwright Jean Anouilh once wrote, can be the enemy of love. Charles left for the Royal Navy in 1973, and with the Royal Family allegedly deeming Camilla an unsuitable bride, she went on to marry army officer Andrew Parker Bowles. Charles, of course, would marry the 18-year-old Lady Diana Spencer in a fairytale wedding watched by 750 million people worldwide in 1981. Camilla was among the guests.

'A bit crowded'

Behind the palace doors, the fairytale was crumbling. According to Charles’s authorised biography, he resumed his affair with Camilla in 1986. Princess Diana later revealed the deep fractures in her marriage, famously confronting Camilla at a party. “I know what's going on between you and Charles and I just want you to know that,” Diana recalled saying.

The affair became an open secret, but the public got confirmation in the most sordid way imaginable. In January 1993, an Australian magazine published what would become the biggest story in its 100-year history: transcripts of a secretly recorded, deeply intimate phone call between the lovers from 1989. The “Camillagate” tapes were utterly devastating.

“To suddenly find yourself as public enemy number one must have been horrific,” her friend, author Kathy Lette, later recalled. The scandal cemented Camilla’s image as the ‘other woman’, a reputation further sealed when Diana told a BBC journalist in a now-infamous interview, “Well, there were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded.”

A carefully managed return

Following Charles and Diana’s divorce in 1996 and the princess’s tragic death a year later, Camilla retreated entirely from the public eye. The public blamed Charles for the entire mess, and a campaign to legitimise his relationship seemed impossible.

Yet, a slow and meticulously planned public relations effort began. Dubbed “Operation Ritz,” the couple’s first official public appearance came in 1999, when they were photographed leaving a birthday party at the Ritz Hotel in London. The moment was a blizzard of camera flashes.

Bit by bit, Camilla was reintroduced. In 2000, the Queen signalled her tacit approval by attending an event knowing Camilla would be there. Five years later, 35 years after they first met, Charles and Camilla were married in a civil ceremony at Windsor Guildhall. The Queen did not attend the wedding itself, but she was present at the reception, a significant gesture.

As the Duchess of Cornwall, Camilla threw herself into charity work, slowly winning over a sceptical press and public with what friends call a “deliciously self-deprecating” charm. The final seal of approval came in February 2022, when Queen Elizabeth II used her Platinum Jubilee message to state her “sincere wish” that Camilla be known as Queen Consort upon Charles’s accession.

When the Queen passed away in September 2022, that wish became reality. Now known simply as Queen Camilla, she stands as the King’s steadfast "rock" - the final, triumphant chapter in one of the most turbulent love stories in modern royal history.