How Camilla won over Queen Elizabeth: the Duchess of Cornwall’s journey from ‘wicked woman’ and Princess Diana’s archrival to the British royal family’s future queen consort
- The Duchess of Cornwall is expected to be known as Queen Camilla once King Charles ascends the throne – after winning over her mother-in-law Queen Elizabeth
- Once known as the woman Charles cheated on Princess Diana with, Camilla won the favour of the British public, but the queen still skipped out on the couple’s royal wedding
Camilla Parker Bowles might be the most recent person to break the internet, after Queen Elizabeth expressed her “sincere wish” that the Duchess of Cornwall, Prince Charles’ second wife, be named queen consort when her eldest son ascends the throne.
It seems that both Camilla’s status as a divorced woman and the controversial nature of her past relationship with the Prince of Wales is well and truly in the past now.
With this recent announcement, Britain’s longest-reigning monarch has paved the way for her daughter-in-law to officially take on the title given to the wife of a reigning monarch and be known as Queen Camilla to his King Charles.
So how did Camilla manage to finally win the queen over?
A frosty start
Unless you were raised under a rock, you probably already know that Charles’ first wife was Diana Spencer, also known as “The People’s Princess”. Charles famously cheated on Princess Diana with Camilla for years, enraging the public and embarrassing the royal family immensely. As a result, the queen took an instant dislike to her son’s partner, reportedly going so far as to call her “that wicked woman” and saying “I want nothing to do with her” after Charles confided he was dating Camilla again following his divorce from Diana in 1996.
Driving a wedge
By 2002, the queen seemed to have realised that her disapproval alone wouldn’t be enough for Charles to break up with Camilla. The queen enlisted the help of long-standing royal servant Michael Peat, who was hired as private secretary to the Prince of Wales with clear instructions to convince Charles to sever his relationship with Camilla. Ultimately, the move backfired. Peat instead convinced Charles to propose to Camilla, and strongly advocated for the two to wed, finally legitimising their relationship in the eyes of the British public.