Queen Camilla was once known best as the infamous third person in King Charles’ first marriage to Princess Diana, and back then no one could have predicted that she would one day be so accepted by the public that she would be crowned alongside Charles as his wife.

Charles’ relationship with Camilla caused issues in his first marriage even from its early days – when Diana was still a very young woman. Before the tragic and untimely of the former Princess of Wales in 1997 she opened up about the “filthy row” she once had with Charles after she had overheard one particular whispered comment he made to Camilla. The revelation came from royal author Andrew Morton, with whom Diana secretly collaborated on a biography of her life, and provided all manner of insider detail on the acrimonious breakdown of her marriage.

Diana broke down to Morton just how heartbreaking she found her husband’s infidelity over the years when the issue repeatedly reared its head. On one occasion, after overhearing an affectionate whispered comment Charles had made to Camilla, Diana admitted that there had been an unpleasant confrontation over their relationship. “I once heard him on the telephone in his bath on his hand-held set, saying: ‘Whatever happens, I will always love you.’ I told him afterwards that I had listened at the door, and we had a filthy row,” the late Princess admitted.

However, the rows and discussions over his relationship with Camilla didn’t stop there, with Diana admitting to the royal author that the couple regularly discussed the matter and that even before then Diana Spencer married Charles, his dynamic with Camilla gave Diana enough pause that she wanted to call off the wedding.

This particularly came up because Charles had a personalised engraved bracelet made for Camilla shortly before his wedding to Diana, “Somebody in his office told me that my husband had had a bracelet made for her, which she wears to this day. It’s a gold chain bracelet with a blue enamel disc. It’s got ‘G and F’ entwined in it, ‘Gladys’ and ‘Fred’,” nicknames that Charles and Camilla are said to refer to one another by.

“I walked into this man’s office one day and said: ‘Oh, what’s in that parcel?’ He said: ‘Oh, you shouldn’t look at that.’ I said: ‘Well, I’m going to look at it.’ “I opened it, and there was (the) bracelet, and I said: ‘I know where this is going.’ I was devastated. This was about two weeks before we got married.” Diana also referred to herself as the “virgin” and “sacrificial lamb” in her marriage to Charles, and that despite his affection for Camilla, “in a way he was obsessed with me. But it was hot and cold, hot and cold. You never knew what mood it was going to be — up and down, up and down.”