When King Charles and Queen Camilla were crowned at Westminster Abbey together, it marked the beginning of a new era for the British monarchy, but it was a day many people never believed would come. Charles and Camilla’s affair during the now-King’s first marriage was one of the biggest royal scandals of the last century, and for many years impacted Camilla’s popularity significantly.
The pair had first been romantically involved before Charles’s first marriage to the late Princess Diana, but they broke things off. Camilla married Andrew Parker Bowles and had two children, Tom and Laura, and Charles married then-Diana Spencer in a lavish royal wedding at St. Paul’s Cathedral.
However, Charles and Camilla eventually rekindled things, and – Diana claimed when she was alive – from the early days of his relationship with his first wife, were still involved with one another. From buying Camilla lavish gifts to using special nicknames for each other, Diana expressed during her lifetime how much pain this affair caused her, and went on to infamously say in an interview with BBC’s Panorama, that “there were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded.”
Whilst Diana was much younger than both Charles and Camilla and admitted to struggling with mental health problems during her marriage, she still stood up for herself and her marriage, a former royal protection officer has claimed – and Diana reportedly called it the “bravest moment” in her marriage later.
Ken Wharfe, speaking to ITV, claimed that the moment of confrontation occurred at a party that was being thrown by Camilla’s sister. None of Diana’s friends were in attendance, so it was a shock that the then-Princess of Wales decided to attend. Wharfe said, “Diana didn’t have any particular friendships at that party but when we arrived there, it was almost like freeze-framing a scene in a movie because there was this surprise that Diana had even arrived.”
About an hour after this awkward-sounding entrance to the party, Diana called over for her personal protection officer, “I went out and there was Diana, who said ‘You’ve got to come with me, I can’t find my husband or Camilla’. Now, I couldn’t say no, clearly, this woman was in some distress, and eventually, we found the Prince and Camilla sat on a sofa in the basement of this property just talking.”
Diana then confronted Camilla directly for the first time, Wharfe claimed, “I didn’t know quite what Diana was going to do at that point but, with a great deal of confidence, Diana just went up to both of them and said to Camilla ‘please don’t treat me like an idiot, I know what’s going on’.
“And Camilla sort of said something, to which still to this day I have never really understood what she meant by that is ‘well you know, you have two wonderful boys’. Well, it was an incredible moment for me and certainly for them as well. That was a defining moment in their life because I think at that point… this was an indicator the end was nigh.”
Charles and Diana eventually separated in 1992, and in 1995 the couple’s divorce was finalised – only two years later, Diana died in a tragic car accident in Paris. In 2005, Camilla and Charles married in a civil ceremony in Windsor, and she became the Duchess of Cornwall.
