Will Camilla Parker Bowles ever become Britain’s queen? Here’s why the Duchess of Cornwall’s ‘princess consort’ royal title might change when Prince Charles ascends the throne
Will Camilla, wife of Britain’s Prince Charles, ever become queen of England? The story is a little more complicated than you may have thought, so let’s unpack it …
In 2020, The Times quoted an official at Clarence House, the official residence of the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall, as underlining this, saying: “The intention is for the duchess to be known as princess consort when the prince accedes to the throne. This was announced at the time of the marriage and there has been absolutely no change at all.”
We need to ask though, why princess consort and not queen consort? After all, the queen’s mother became queen consort upon the coronation of her husband King George VI. Even after his death in 1952, and the accession of her daughter Elizabeth to the crown, she retained the title Queen Elizabeth the queen mother.
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Royal expert Marlene Koenig has opined that when Camilla wed Prince Charles, “Camilla was not popular or well liked, [although] this has changed a lot since the marriage as Camilla has taken on a lot of patronages and Charles is a lot happier. Still, [there was] a lot of tension and anger among a certain element of the population – so it was decided that Camilla would be styled as the Duchess of Cornwall, even though, of course, she is the Princess of Wales.”
While it seems that the matter of Camilla’s queenship has been settled, here’s the rub. In 2005, Labour MP Andrew Mackinlay stated that it was, “absolutely unequivocal that she automatically becomes queen when he becomes king”, an interpretation confirmed by then-constitutional affairs minister Christopher Leslie.
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In 2018, the website for Clarence House was revamped, with an FAQ about what Camilla’s title would be if her husband acceded to the throne being removed, kicking off whispers that she might be granted the title of queen, after all.
Since her 2005 wedding to the heir to the British throne, Camilla’s popularity has grown in the court of public opinion, but a poll in The Sunday Times, in August 2017, still showed “two thirds of Britons did not think she should be queen, and only 19 per cent thought she was fit for the role”.
- The queen mother was first queen consort to her husband King George VI, then attained her current title after the ascension of her daughter Elizabeth
- Out of respect for Princess Diana and her tragic death in a 1997 car accident in Paris, Buckingham Palace chose to call Camilla Duchess of Cornwall, not Princess of Wales