On 9 April 2005, Prince Charles married his so-called "mistress" Camilla. After his affair and chaotic divorce, the British were not interested in his new wife. The couple is celebrating their seventeenth wedding anniversary, but Camilla still seems to be behaving in a low-key manner...
Now imagine how much Camilla was a woman hated by the British in the 1990s, and it is said that when their extramarital affair was just exposed by the media, Camilla was barely afraid to step out of the house for months, otherwise she would be surrounded by a group of screaming photographers and the crackling of their aggressive flash.
Even today, Camilla is reportedly a mysterious figure who, in addition to rarely giving media interviews, protects her private life as much as possible. If her silence made her the center of the storm, there is no doubt that this caution also made her gradually respected by her future subjects after the scandal passed.
There is no doubt that Prince Charles was a faithful man to his lover Camilla, not his wife Diana. After all, his "first love" with Camilla occurred before his child's future mother, in 1970.
At the time, both young men were still single. They met in a polo match and decided to form a pair. The following year, when Prince Charles left for military training, the two broke up. But they didn't break the relationship, and the pair remained good friends with their former lovers. The most conclusive evidence is that after Camilla got married and had children, she asked her ex-boyfriend to be her son's godfather. Prince Charles gladly accepted. There's no doubt that he might think it's a great excuse to be able to get close to the woman he loves very well.
Princess Diana, an unexpected opponent
Prince Charles married Diana in 1981. Now it seems that this is not only a marriage about love, but also a marriage of expediency... At least for Prince Charles. On her wedding night, Diana discovers a necklace that her husband bought for her lover, and she understands that her husband has no intention of being loyal to her. In 1996, their marriage broke down and Prince Charles and Camilla's ambiguous friendship turned into love. In other words, it is entirely understandable that although Prince Charles was asleep next to Diana, his heart was in Camilla.
Buckingham Palace was aware of the Crown Prince's ill-conceived affair, and Queen Elizabeth II hoped that this was just a momentary confusion for her son, and after that heat came down. But she didn't realize diana's anger, who was tired of being cheated on by her husband and decided to give a media interview. "There was a third party in our marriage, so it became a bit claustrophobic," she said on the "Panorama" show, and began a nuclear war with the royal family. From the video at the time, it can be seen that Diana, who was completely irrational, began to violently expose the royal family, which also triggered the anger of the latter.
In the face of Diana's pain and helplessness, many people stood up for her. One day, while shopping at a supermarket near her home, Camilla found herself surrounded by a group of women who threw bread in their faces and yelled insults at her. The humiliation was sheer for the young woman, who ran out of the store as fast as she could. At the same time, as angry voices rose and fell in Britain, the already low popularity of Charles's approval quickly plummeted, making the queen more and more worried about the future of herself and the British monarchy.
According to reports at the time, after divorcing Diana, Charles and Camilla did not officially disclose their relationship. Until a year after Diana died in a car accident in Paris. In the face of public opinion's anger at the Windsor family, it is said that the Queen of England, who had not yet met Camilla, did not dare to rush to summon Camilla...
So, in the face of the impasse, who finally brought Prince Charles and Camilla together?
According to reports at the time, in order to help Camilla establish a positive image, some of her close friends began to give interviews in waves, but most of them in vain. Outraged by Diana's death, no Englishman liked to listen to the cliché they said, and in their view, as long as Prince Charles did not formally marry Camilla, she would never have a chance to marry into the royal family. This is also a bad breath for Diana.
In the end, Prince Charles, who was forced to be helpless, had to arrange for his personal secretary Michael Pitt to come forward to protect the media to push him to propose to Camilla. In 2003, Camilla moved to Clarence House. The royal family hastened to reassure the media that the house would not be renovated with public funds. On April 9, 2005, Prince Charles and Camilla held a low-key wedding in the presence of Prince William.
Seventeen years later, Camilla succeeded in establishing a real place in the monarchy. She had a very close relationship with her mother-in-law, and after Prince Charles became king, she would be given the title of "Queen" instead of the "Princess" originally planned. Camilla may no longer be an undesirable person in the royal family or hated by the media, but she still occupies a less enviable position in the polling firm Ipsos' ranking of royals based on popularity. That's why we have today's question: is Camilla enough for the British to be their queen one day?
| Liang Ishikawa