Camilla's Rise To The Royal Throne | Winner Takes It All | Real Royalty

From soldier's wife to royal mistress to royal consort, Camilla Parker Bowles has made a unique transformation. This majestic makeover has been achieved by expensive grooming. Cosmetic dentistry, Botox injections and even a facelift have been rumoured. Dowdy country clothes have been banished and replaced by sleek new outfits. Couture houses such as Valentino and Versace now clothe a mature figure so loved by the Prince of Wales. No longer hiding in rural seclusion, Camilla enjoys the writs and glitz of her celebrity status. Plays and premieres, grand dinners and parties, lavish holidays and suites in royal homes fill the life of the best kept woman in Britain. Camilla was carefully repackaged and presented to the public as a wife-in-waiting. She is the official Mrs Wales. She's having a wonderful time. Money is no object. Charles adores her. He showers her with jewels. She is a very rich woman now, thanks to her royal lover. A front row place beside the catwalk at fashion parades, such as Stella McCartney's Chloe show in Paris, mark Camilla as a client with international prestige. She's learned to royal way with restrained outfits, conspicuous hats and serious jewellery. Camilla gets sent to New York to have a bit of a makeover and she gets given a big clothes allowance by Charles to go and look right. The one thing where she does of course score wonderfully now, she is beginning to get some decent jewellery, the proper stuff from Charles. Camilla is adorned with fabulous gems at events such as her 50th birthday party held at Highgrove, Charles's country home. At his 50th party she wore this aquamarine and diamond necklace. It belonged to her great-grandmother Alice Keppel, mistress of King Edward VII, Charles's great-great-grandfather. Charles is fascinated by today's repetition of their great romance. He goes out of his way to find jewellery which belonged to her great-grandmother Alice Keppel. He wants to revisit history and what he's done is gone out of his way to try and find all the jewellery which King Edward VII gave to Alice Keppel and give it back to Camilla. Now you can call it sentimental or you can call it what you want. Some would call it expensive. Charles learned that a well-kept mistress can cost as much as a wife. Camilla wears clothes from Versace, one of Diana's favourite fashion labels. The princess wore a Versace gown in Chicago in 1996. Tall, slim and elegant she was an iconic style setter. Glamour gowns are less suited to the more matronly figure as Camilla has discovered. I think she feels uncomfortable wearing these clothes which is why she is such a figure of fun with the British press. It doesn't quite hang together right and she does not like the comparisons with Princess Diana. Well a lot of photographers came to me recently and said my god we took some pictures of Camilla last night and she looked transformed. She was a different woman, no lines on around her eyes. Apart from that I've noticed that she's trying a lot harder with her makeup and her hair. For many years Camilla and I have been to the same hairdresser and I've seen her sitting at the next wash basin to me but when she had her hair done she'd insist on brushing it out herself. She wouldn't let the professionals do it and she always had a kind of 1970s bad Farah Fawcett majors kind of look to her hair that was very dated but she seemed to like it like that. That seems to have changed it's a bit more slick it's a bit more polished a bit more professional nowadays so she's certainly trying harder and one reason for that so I'm told could be that she's worried about hanging on to her prince and she's trying very hard to to look the part and to keep him. Luxurious holidays courtesy of wealthy friends with sumptuous villas and palatial yachts have a certain appeal. A Greek island's cruise on the mega yacht Alexander cost 90 000 a day but it's free to Charles, Camilla and their guests. There are Charles's residences to enjoy. Highgrove with its cherished gardens and admired architecture was chosen by Camilla. It's where she stables her horses, convenient for a woman who likes to hunt with the local gentry, a hobby which costs Charles around 45 000 pounds a year. On the Queen's Balmoral estate in Scotland there is Burke Hall, once the Queen Mother's home. It was the scene of many a secret rendezvous. She was quite willing to throw open her house at Burke Hall in the Highlands for Charles and of course nowadays it's Charles's home. The Queen has passed it on to him and he's redecorated it and he and Camilla spend many holidays there. Owned by a trust, the Castle of May on the northern tip of Scotland was the Queen Mother's private home. Charles adored his grandmother and feels that he and Camilla are keeping her memory alive by staying in her favourite retreat. Camilla is chatelaine of Clarence House, the Queen Mother's old London home. It's worth 150 million pounds. When everybody moved into Clarence House once its refurbishment was complete, William and Harry found themselves living for the first time with their father's mistress. Now if that was difficult enough it was made more difficult by the fact that Camilla also imported her father Major Bruce Shand and so suddenly there are people that they don't really know terribly well and they're supposed to share a roof with them and I think both William and Harry found that a very uncomfortable experience. Mark Bolland who has since left the Prince's household for a media relations career also served Camilla. Courtiers like Bolland owed allegiance to both the Prince and his mistress. I wouldn't call them sycophants but I would say that they're all extremely loyal to Prince Charles and therefore when Camilla moved in they're extremely loyal to her. If they want to keep their jobs they have to like it or lump it. Being a royal courtier is pretty much a lickspittle job. You know you tug your forelock to the boss and if the boss has got a new girlfriend then you go along with whatever the girlfriend says. Whatever they feel privately she's part of the management team now and they have to work to her as well as work to Prince Charles. It's a wonderful life for a woman who lives like a queen but has few duties except taking over Charles's splendid homes. Camilla is now running the royal show. She's in charge of three royal residences. Clarence House the main royal residence, Bourke Hall the Scottish residence and Highgrove which you must remember is the house that she chose for Prince Charles not Prince Charles choosing for himself. She had a very strong say in the way that the houses were refurbished. She oversaw the way that the gardens were reorganized and she really really runs the everyday business of all the royal palaces on Prince Charles's behalf. She's a very powerful figure in that way and although we don't see very much of her in public at the moment you mustn't underestimate the power which she wields both over the Prince of Wales and the Prince of Wales's staff and households. Camilla's own home Raymill House was bought after her divorce in 1995. Smaller and less imposing than Highgrove a few miles away the house was redecorated and the gardens maintained to exacting standards with costs met by Charles. Members of his close circle helped to buy the property. When she wanted to buy her country home in Wiltshire a group of Prince Charles's friends raised the money for the mortgage and so they kind of bailed her out. Apart from the upkeep of the 17 acre estate Charles also pays for Camilla's security system. He provides her with highly trained bodyguards to protect her from harm. In 1997 Camilla had a minor accident on the winding roads leading to Highgrove. Charles pays all her motoring costs. Certainly now her clothes, her running expenses, her car, the two police former police people who who look after her, chauffeur her around and act as her protection officers, they're all paid for by Prince Charles. Camilla undertakes some low-key charity work. She became a patron of the Wiltshire Bobby Vans appeal, a scheme which provides voluntary home security. In 2004 she joined Prince Charles on a public engagement for the appeal. Her sister Annabel Elliot came to see the couple's fundraising attempt. They were warmly received in a county which is home territory for Camilla, a shrewd way of guaranteeing public approval for their relationship. One onlooker told the press it's nice to see them together, they've got a life to lead haven't they? I don't see why not, we can't all live in the past. But this campaign to launch Camilla as a charity queen has had to proceed with caution. If she did take on more charity work she might be accused of following it or trying to follow in Diana's footsteps but the problem is she's not very good. Her biographer Christopher Wilson described it to me like this, he said she's great one-to-one but she's no good with the crowd. The difficulty for Camilla is she's uneasy in the presence of the British public. Diana had a wonderful magnetic charm which made everybody feel better once they'd spoken to her or met her and so it made her an absolute natural going out on the charity circuit raising money and raising awareness. Camilla just doesn't have that common touch and as a result she has stayed away from the one vehicle which could bring her in contact with the British public and allow the British public to assess for themselves whether this woman who lives with the Prince of Wales is worthy of their support. In 1997 Camilla became a patron of the National Osteoporosis Society. Although she had a personal interest in the bone thinning disease the charity was a useful launching point for a more public role. Posing with British celebrities to raise the charity's profile also served to enhance her own. She became president of the society in 2001. Her self-assurance grew quickly as she took on more engagements. In 2002 she attended the society's book launch. Well I think anybody who's very interested in osteoporosis should read it. It's very cheap, it's very good reading and it'll tell you all about it. Why are you particularly interested in it? Acting as an ambassador for the society she attended the World Congress on Osteoporosis in Camilla made a speech. My family knew nothing about osteoporosis. The local GP was kind and sympathetic but he like us was able to do little to alleviate the terrible pain my mother suffered so stoically. We watched in horror as she quite literally shrunk in front of our eyes. Camilla took her place with confidence at this round table of international women's leaders. She had begun to perform like a royal. A walk with the prince in Green Park near Buckingham Palace was another milestone in Operation Camilla. The carefully orchestrated campaign by Charles's spin doctors to gain acceptance for the couple. Charles and Camilla met on the polo field at Smith's Lawn near Windsor in 1971. Charles began a lifetime romance with Camilla but she was already in love with another polo player, Charles's friend, handsome guards officer Andrew Parker Bowles. He had quite a collection of female admirers. After a brief affair with Charles, Camilla married Andrew. She was not aristocratic enough to be Princess of Wales and Charles was committed to a naval career. Her marriage did not end the royal liaison. On leave from the navy Charles would meet Camilla at Hall Place, the home of her grandmother. Camilla helped him choose a wife to provide heirs to the throne. Lady Diana Spencer was ideally suited. We thought it was going to be announced on his 32nd birthday but there wasn't and he told reporters yesterday that it may be coming soon. Have you any comment to make about that? The engagement was finally announced in February 1981, shortly before Charles left for a trip to Australia. Minutes before these pictures, Charles had taken an intimate call from Camilla. His teenage fiancee knew and was left fighting back the tears. She was crying at the airport because she knew instinctively that this wasn't going well, that Charles still was obsessing about Camilla. He thought about her. We saw later of course in the royal honeymoon that the cuff links and the photographs of Camilla which fell out of his pocketbook. These are things that she knew instinctively already that his mind and thoughts were with Camilla and not with her, his future wife. Charles stayed on the remote ranch in Queensland of his old polo trainer Sinclair Hill. He didn't contact Diana but kept in touch with Camilla. From Sinclair Hill's home the prince's phone calls to a woman were secretly recorded and the bugged love tapes passed to the press who naturally assumed that the mystery female was Diana. I think it must have been a double blow for Diana because already there had been the royal train incident when it was suggested that Diana had spent the night on the royal train with Charles. In fact we now know it was Camilla Parker Bowles. Now this new blow, she is just a moment away from actually getting married to Prince Charles and she discovers that he's been making private telephone calls which have been bugged. They're supposed to be to Diana but in fact they're to Camilla. Now she is within weeks of actually getting married to Prince Charles. Charles isn't calling her at home but he's calling Camilla. Can you imagine what was going on in her mind? Later Diana called her wedding day the most emotionally confusing day of my life. Camilla had been in St Paul's Cathedral as Diana and Charles exchanged their wedding vows. For several years the palace protected the fairy tale. When the palace deceived the British public and the media about the state of the marriage of Charles and Diana and the fact that Camilla was involved, they always operate at the palace a defensive public relations system, not an offensive one. So they were trying to protect his reputation and a lot of people were fooled for a long time, myself included. I thought that he's far too noble a person to be unfaithful to his wife and betray his marriage vows. But he said, do you expect me to be the first Prince of Wales who doesn't have a mistress? Leading the guard of honour for the carriage taking the couple to their honeymoon was Camilla's husband Andrew Parker Bowles. A page at the Queen's coronation he was now a lieutenant colonel with the household cavalry. Interviewed that day he described Charles as a marvellous leader and a marvellous man. Very few knew that Bowley Hyde Manor, the Parker Bowles home a few minutes drive from Highgrove, had been used for trysts between Charles and Camilla. In time Camilla also made secret visits to Highgrove. It's important to remember that when she got married Highgrove was Diana's home. I mean Kensington Palace was her London base, but Highgrove was home and on the occasions I visited the house it was her place. But I think as the marriage deteriorated and she knew that Highgrove was where her husband entertained Camilla Parker Bowles, obviously her views on the place changed. So by the time she left she metaphorically and pretty much literally shook the dust of it off her shoes. Charles had bought Highgrove to be close to Camilla. It's near the Gloucestershire town of Tetbury with its centuries-old buildings. Despite its quaint charm Diana never felt at ease in the area. It was too near Camilla and the Beaufort hunt. At this time Diana didn't ride and she was suspicious of the hunting set who might provide opportunities for Charles to see Camilla. Once when she was having lunch the hunts sort of came galloping through the garden, the local hunt the Beaufort, and she was outraged because Prince Charles jumped up left his lunch to get cold on the table and rushed out to sort of look at them and she was furious. Charles also met Camilla at safe houses loaned by friends who encouraged his betrayal of Diana. They were photographed together at one of their secret locations, Glynsellyn House near Brecon, owned by friends in Camilla's circle. In 1986 the Parker Bowles family moved to Middlewick House, again close to Highgrove. Caught out by the press, Charles made a frantic escape hidden under a blanket. He also journeyed to love nests around the country. The locations included Garaby Hall in Yorkshire, home of the Earl and Countess of Halifax, Eton Hall in Cheshire, home of Anne, Duchess of Westminster, and Northmore Farm, then the Suffolk home of the Van Cutsoms. Florence in Tuscany was a shared passion. They visited a villa bought by King Edward VII for Alice Keppel. Here they loved to paint. The couple visited Turkey in 1989. When these sneak pictures in the press failed to end the affair, Diana took action herself. Prince Charles really believed that he could manage his love life. He could keep Camilla in one compartment and Diana in the other, and he was appalled when he was invited by Lady Annabelle Goldsmith to her house, Ormley Lodge, to go to a birthday party, to discover that Diana, who had also been invited, was actually going to come. Surprisingly, the Prince of Wales didn't expect the Princess to go, but she did, and I went with both the Prince and Princess of Wales. And he was appalled at the thought that the two women in his life were actually going to meet, and all his worst nightmares came true. Camilla and Charles had nipped off together, they were having a private conversation downstairs away from the main party. Within about an hour or so, I heard my voice being shouted from the hallway, and it was the Princess, and she was rather distressed, and she said to me, Ken, I can't find the Prince of Wales. So I said, well, you know, there's not much I can do, you know, why? She said, well, you know, I can't see Camilla either. So there was a sort of a rather serious tone that came out, an expression came across her face. She said, will you come and help me find them? Finally Diana cracked, she raced down the stairs, she confronted Camilla and said, leave my husband alone. Diana had control of that moment, and I think it must have been a wonderfully triumphant moment for her, because it was the only time, during all the time that she was married to Prince Charles, that she was ever able to confront Camilla and tell her to keep off her husband. I think when we were on tour in Egypt, Diana told me about confronting Camilla Parker Bowles at the Goldsmith party, and I mean, it didn't surprise me very much, because I knew the Princess was a pretty feisty lady, and I was quite pleased on her behalf that she was confronting somebody who she felt was a very unwelcome intrusion in her life. Diana privately nicknamed Camilla the Rottweiler. Camilla called her Barbie after the doll. Everyone in royal circles knew that Charles and Diana now lived separate lives. Charles played polo every summer, a hobby Diana disliked almost as much as hunting. In 1990, the Prince broke his arm in a dangerous fall. Diana was with Charles when he left hospital, but this show was a deliberate smokescreen to conceal the true state of the marriage. They went home to Highgrove together, but Diana soon left its front door for London, and Camilla arrived by the back entrance to nurse the Prince. The marriage entered a terminal stage, with Diana and Charles both using Highgrove at different times. Camilla took over every aspect of Charles's private life. She is a mother to Charles, she's a nanny, she's a nurse, she's a mistress, she's somebody who treats him as a little boy, which I think is what he wants half the time. I think she must be great in bed with him, and looks after him in that department exceptionally well. This is a lady who just does everything for the Prince of Wales, and doesn't actually ask for that much in return. To be fair, I don't think she's even asked him to marry her. In June 1992, a biography of Diana revealed her suicide attempts, and an eating disorder caused by her anguish over Charles's closeness to Camilla. Her secret cooperation with author Andrew Morton betrayed her husband and the royal family. The couple were scarcely speaking as they performed their last foreign tour in Korea that November. Days later, the Prime Minister, John Major, made this historic announcement. It is announced from Buckingham Palace that with regret, the Prince and Princess of Wales have decided to separate. 1993 began badly with Camilla Gate, a bugged intimate phone call between Charles and Camilla. I can't bear a Sunday night without you. Charles's advisors encouraged him to tell his version of events to biographer Jonathan Dimbleby. On television, he admitted adultery with Camilla. She was exposed to public censure. Whenever there's a crisis, the royal family has one rule, and one rule only, and that is don't do anything. And when the Camilla Gate tapes were published, when Andrew Morton's book exposing Charles's long affair with Camilla was published, Prince Charles did nothing. He let her take care of affairs for herself. As a result, she was put under house arrest by the British press, she was vilified in public, people threw bread rolls at her, and basically he did nothing to protect her. Nobody was sent in by his team, Prince Charles's team, to actually make life more easy for her. She had to survive by herself. Diana also mapped out a route for her own survival. On the night of Charles's televised admission of adultery, she upstaged him by wearing one of her most daring dresses at a charity event. A year later, she bared her soul in a remarkable interview for the program Panorama. She spoke of her illnesses, her despair, and her feelings of failure as a wife. With calculated revenge, she blamed Camilla. Do you think Mrs Parker Bowles was a factor in the breakdown of your marriage? Well, there were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded. Famously, Diana said that there were three in her marriage, by which I guess she was referring to Camilla Parker Bowles, and it's a fair bet that if there had only been two in the marriage, then it would have been easier for those two to do what was, after all, their duty constitutionally, which was to stay married. I think that's sometimes forgotten, that that fairytale wedding in St. Paul's in 1981 was the Windsor dynasty's best bet for long-term survival, and the fact that that didn't work for whatever reason, whether it was Camilla Parker Bowles or anything else, is the gravest, most dangerous threat to the long-term future of the dynasty. Camilla and Andrew Parker Bowles were divorced in early 1995, a few months after Charles's admission of adultery. Andrew had been embarrassed by his longtime friend and fellow army officer. Camilla remained silent. When Camilla got divorced from Andrew Parker Bowles, the only reason that that happened was 100 percent Prince Charles's fault. It would never have happened if he hadn't humiliated Andrew Parker Bowles by going on television. He admitted that he'd been unfaithful. Three days later, it was as quick as that, Andrew then said, a divorce has to go ahead. In fact, he behaved very well. He became the guilty party. It was very old-fashioned, and he took all the blame, and I think she divorced him. But that would never have happened if the Prince of Wales hadn't made that ridiculous admission to Dimbleby. Not only did it cook hold him in front of everybody, but it also was a fellow brother officer in one of the regiments saying, I have been having an affair with a fellow officer's wife. That is an absolute no-no in the British army. You do not behave like that. Andrew, who had retired from the army on a pension, remarried. His second wife, Rose, took Camilla's place at society events such as Ascot each summer. The divorce cleared the way for Camilla's second marriage. Charles, who'd been having this wonderfully illicit affair, which went on for years and years and years, was in the position where he had to make an honest woman out of Camilla. Now, it may be that after all these years they'd been together, he was actually tiring of her, and we may see that today that they live in Clarence House, but living separate lives. Who knows? But what I do know is that Charles forced this divorce, he ended up with Camilla whether he wanted her or not. Camilla's children, Tom and Laura, were affected by their mother's affair with Prince Charles. Tom was so embarrassed by other boys' teasing that at one stage he changed his surname to Bowles. He also turned to drugs and was caught out amid unrestrained publicity. Charles had to distance himself and his boys from his lover's son. One of the great disasters of the Camilla campaign, the campaign to try and make her more acceptable to the British public, was to try and join together the Parker Bowles family and the House of Windsor family, the children of Camilla and the children of Prince Charles. And the spin doctors were trying terribly hard to make this look like one nuclear family, but in fact it was never going to work. Prince William and Prince Harry are remarkably suspicious of the whole Parker Bowles ethos, and they wanted to maintain their distance. Parker Bowles is a valuable brand name. Tom, who once sold wax jackets in Harrods, has reinvented himself as a cookery writer. Charles and Camilla's friend Emily Van Cutsem fell out with them over Tom's influence on the young princes. The feud was exposed when her son Edward married Lady Tamara Grosvenor, daughter of the Duke of Westminster. Two or three years previously, the Van Cutsems had, at a dinner, had warned Prince Charles that the boys were mixing with Tom Parker Bowles, Camilla's son, who had been taking drugs, and they said, you know, he's a bad influence. When that dinner table conversation got back to Camilla, she struck back by making comments about the Van Cutsem children. The presence of the Queen added the aura of royalty and the rigidity of protocol. With her status defined by her role as a mistress, Camilla had to be seated away from the royal family. She knew that she wouldn't be sitting with Charles, but when she read in the papers, nobody'd had the courtesy to tell her this, that she was not only not going to be sitting with Charles, but she'd be sitting over the other side of the church somewhere at the back, I think she felt a bit piqued. We've got a royal mistress whose status and position is still very ambivalent, and of course the whole, the whole pond is made muddier because there are so many people stirring away in it. Charles faced a dilemma. If he attended, Camilla would be effectively snubbed. If he stayed away, he could be accused of letting down the bridal couple and their families. It became the war of the wedding, and Camilla won. For the first time since I can almost remember, the Prince of Wales actually stood up and got counted and showed some real fighting venom in favour of Camilla, and for the first time Charles said, obviously, fine, I don't like this either. I'm going to find a good reason not to go to this wedding. Charles seems to have learned nothing in the sphere of public relations. He doesn't know about damage limitation. He doesn't know how to see a problem that's coming down the road and take avoiding action, and in the Van Cutsen wedding we see a royal piece of machinery which doesn't work. During the Queen's Golden Jubilee celebrations in 2002, an open-air pop concert was held in the Most members of the royal family attended. In the row behind the princes, Camilla sat with her friends Angus Ogilvy and his wife Princess Alexandra, the Queen's cousin. When Angus sadly died of cancer in 2004, Camilla was not allowed to be near the royal family at his funeral. Things were different in King Edward VII's day. Most of the aristocracy knew about Alice Keppel, but the public were kept in ignorance. Her identity was not disclosed by the deferential press of the time. The British press still kept to King's secrets in 1936. Edward VIII's romance with twice-divorced Wallis Simpson was unknown until he abdicated and they went into exile. But the world knew too much about Camilla's role in the breakdown of Charles's marriage to let her be forgotten. The problem is that he now cannot dump or ditch Camilla because he's gone too far down the Camilla road to have made all that unhappiness and created so much misery for the monarchy, for Diana, for his children, for everybody, for her sake. He now has to stick with her. It's almost like Edward and Mrs Simpson back in the 1930s. He couldn't drop her. I mean, he didn't appear to want to, but it's a situation whereby he's made his bed. He has to lie in it. It's almost like the famous saying that when you marry the mistress, you create a vacancy. I've always felt that Prince Charles was a natural bachelor. I remember the days before he was married and I thought, he doesn't need a wife. He's got housekeepers galore. He's got valets. He's got, you know, butlers. He's got everything that a normal man needs to run his household. A wife was just an accessory. What he really needed was a mistress. Another contender for that role was blonde Australian-born Lady Tryon, married to another of Charles's friends. Nicknamed Kanga by Charles, she ran a smart dress shop in London. She was injured in a fall and confined to a wheelchair and died shortly after Diana in 1997. Before her death, she recalled her friendship with Charles. Just because he happens to be Prince of Wales doesn't mean he's any different from lots of other friends. And I love my friends and I love him a lot, but there's a very different thing saying you're in love with someone than that you love them. And my friends have been a wonderful, wonderful support. After their parents' separation, William and Harry were given a young nanny, Tiggy Legg-Burke, a daughter of a courtier. Her family were respected Welsh landowners and Charles often stayed on the family's Glanuski estate. Both Diana and Camilla were jealous of Tiggy's easy relationship with Charles. This led to rumours that despite his reliance on Camilla, Charles still had a roving eye. Camilla seems to be the kind of nanny that he had when he was a small boy and that nurtured him and the person he ran to when he was upset. And she sort of replaced the mother that he never really had because his mother was too busy running the country or reigning. And I think he's now old enough to feel a bit trapped by that. He has had friendships, friendships in inverted commas with other ladies. And maybe they were when Camilla wasn't available, who knows, but he certainly has had other friendships. And perhaps he thought, well, you know, if I were a free agent, I'd be able to have a little bit more fun. Camilla's reputation preceded her. When her old friend Lucia Santa Cruz invited her to a home in Chile, Camilla received the frenzied paparazzi treatment once endured by Diana. There is a profit in pictures of Camilla and those who take them sometimes get closer than she would wish. The strain on her was evident, but by taking bodyguards paid by Charles to protect her, Camilla will avoid this ordeal in future. Being the prince's companion meant that she was never really free from press attention, even on a night out at the London Ritz with her elderly father, Major Bruce Shand. Sometimes she welcomed organised publicity as part of the strategy to gain public acceptance. But eating a sausage could be risky for the image if there was a photographer around. I think the British press love to have a bit of a laugh at Camilla. She doesn't quite have it. They have a wonderful time making jokes about how she doesn't quite carry it off. Camilla feels at ease with the hunting set, which Diana disliked. She's at her most confident on horseback and can even joke with the press. Do the press treat her well? I don't think Camilla gets a particularly fair press, but once she came into that firing line, she's always going to get shot at. I mean, it's a bit of a nightmare for any woman, least of all Camilla, to be permanently compared on the looks front with Diana. I mean, most women, even supermodels, sort of suffered a bit when, in comparison to Diana. You know, I don't think that worries Camilla particularly. I don't think it worries Charles. I think Charles has always found Camilla infinitely more attractive to behold than Diana. OK, very strange, but love is blind, isn't it? Hunting, a country pursuit she shares with Charles, is one of the passions which unite them. However beautiful and accomplished an ambassador for Britain, Diana could not retain a husband's love. Charles preferred the woman who presented no threat to his fragile ego. His wife was simply too popular. But were the underlying cultural differences between Charles and Diana too wide? Diana was a town girl married to a countryman, and although she had lots of friends and she grew up in Norfolk and Northamptonshire, she wasn't really a part of that polo-loving hunting group. She did not like horses or horse riding, and she resented the time it took Prince Charles away from her. But also, I think, because she suspected that he was using the hunt as an excuse to meet Camilla. William and Harry had to cope with the complexity of their parents' separation and divorce, and with the adverse publicity surrounding it. After their mother's untimely death, Camilla became part of their lives. I think Harry, more than William, has been really upset by the fact that Camilla walked in and took over Diana's home, Diana's man, Diana's lifestyle, Diana's everything. She stepped straight into a dead woman's shoes. And Harry, who was perhaps, you know, the baby of the family, much closer to his mother than William, he bitterly resents that. Prince William seems to be very diplomatic and very conciliatory. He knows his father's had a rough time, and he seems to think, well, if it makes you happy, Dad, fine. Because remember, William hasn't really been around very much at home. He's been away at university for the last four years, more or less, so he hasn't had to put up much with Camilla. It's been worse for Prince Harry, who seems very unforgiving and not ready to accept Camilla in his life whatsoever. They have always felt uncomfortable in her presence, and it is significant that although they moved into Clarence House as part of the so-called nuclear family, the House of Wales, they've moved back into their old apartments at St James's Palace. They just don't want to be close to Camilla. The couple considered marrying in Scotland to sidestep any difficulties presented by the Church of England, of which Charles will be Supreme Governor. Charles' divorced sister, Anne, married Tim Lawrence at Balmoral under easier Church of Scotland rules in 1992. For Charles, a compromise was reached. The Church has had a very significant role in forcing Charles' hand in marriage. They have been very uncomfortable for a long time to see Charles and Camilla living, as they see it, in sin. The difficulty they face is that the Church is split over this. The evangelical side of it really believes that Charles is beyond the pale and can never really hold any responsible role within the Church of England, and so they don't want to see a marriage at all. The pragmatist side of the Church of England wants to see this problem solved, and in the end it was the pragmatists who won. Camilla was carefully positioned during the Jubilee Pop Concert in Buckingham Palace Gardens. Not allowed to sit beside Charles and his sons, she was kept well away from the Queen, who simply ignored her. I've no idea what the Queen thinks of Camilla Parker Bowles, and very, very few people do have an accurate idea of what the Queen thinks of Camilla Parker Bowles. I think it's quite eloquent that the Queen has obviously been at some pains to distance herself from the Prince's mistress, despite complicated and expensive attempts by the Prince to manipulate the media in Camilla's favour. People don't yet regard her as somebody they want to see on the balcony of Buckingham Palace one day. They may never think that she's a suitable person to do that, and until then I'm sure the Queen is wise to leave her own views tantalisingly unspecific. As Head of State and Supreme Governor of the Church of England, the Queen is always conscious of the example she sets. For years she has kept a delicate balance, knowing that Charles's adultery with Camilla could easily impact on her own standing and popularity. For this reason, she avoided confronting the Camilla issue. The Queen has her own thoughts on this. She has a constituent she has to answer to, the right-minded people of this country, people who believe in morality and not in adultery, people who she wants to represent. She wants to put distance between herself and Camilla because she has her eye on history. She believes that she is now contending with Queen Victoria to be the great sovereign of this nation, and she doesn't want anything to taint that history when it is written. And certainly by involving herself with Camilla Parker Bowles, it can only be a downside. So the Queen will always maintain a very large distance between herself and Camilla. Charles told the Queen that Camilla is the one non-negotiable area of his life. He made public appearances with Camilla, which put the Queen in a difficult position. We can see over the period of the last three or four years that she's been snookered more than once. She has been pushed by Prince Charles and his courtiers into doing things that she would prefer not to do. The Queen does not accept Camilla Parker Bowles, and that is a problem for the future. The plan is for Camilla to be Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Cornwall while the Queen is alive, and Princess Consort when Charles becomes King. This is an apparent contravention of English law, but it leaves the door open for her to become a Queen Consort. While Charles is living with Camilla and they're married in all but name, that doesn't seem to matter much to people, to the British public at large anyway. They sort of think, oh well he deserves a bit of happiness, but at the same time if you question them and say, would you like Camilla to be Queen, they get horrified. The fact is that she's automatically Queen, that's it, that's the law of the land here, that a woman takes on the rights and titles of her husband. Edward VIII was forced to choose between the throne and Wallis Simpson. His Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, warned him, in the choice of a Queen, the voice of the people must be heard. He chose abdication and married Mrs Simpson at the Château de Condé in France, but she was denied the title Her Royal Highness. As Duke and Duchess of Windsor, they spent the rest of their lives in exile. Charles has pursued a high-risk strategy to keep the throne and the woman he loves. The divorced and widowed Prince looks poignantly alone on his solo engagements. He will be happier with Camilla at his side, but could her presence damage the monarchy, which still depends on public acceptance in Britain and in the Commonwealth countries? Speculation will continue over the constitutional problems raised by the royal marriage, reactions to Camilla show divisions of national opinion, some feel that Charles has put Camilla before his duty and should surrender his rights to the throne. The Queen too is concerned over Charles's ability to ensure the survival of the monarchy. She believes that the monarchy is only as strong as the weakest link and right now Prince Charles certainly looks like the weakest link, he seems to have sacrificed everything, I mean at one stage we all thought you can have either Camilla or the crown but you can't have both, well he sort of said no I am, I'm going to have both. The long shadow of Diana reaches over Charles and Camilla's marriage, will they ever be allowed to forget the fairy tale wedding that ended in misery and tragedy? I think the great British public are ready to forget and they're probably not ready to forgive and so they will always eye Camilla with slight suspicion, a lingering disregard, she will never be a darling of the people like Diana was, there's too much against her but at the same time I think everybody realises that this marriage had to occur, their position had to be regularised and it's a good opportunity for a brand new start. The newly engaged Camilla posed with Charles at Windsor Castle wearing a half million pound diamond ring from the late Queen Mother's collection. How are you feeling ma'am? I'm just coming down to work. Did you get down on one knee to propose? Of course. Are you very happy sir? This is the unlikely story of a woman who won a prince against all odds, now she has a harder task ahead, winning the hearts of the people will not be as easy.