Meeting the in-laws for the first time is a daunting task for any partner but when your mother-in-law is the late Queen Elizabeth II that could be an understatement.
And when only your second meeting with said mother-in-law is at the Queen Mother‘s funeral the stakes couldn’t be higher.
But this was what Queen Camilla faced in 2002 when the Queen Mother died at the grand age of 101.
Despite the sad circumstances surrounding their meeting, it was a ‘watershed moment’ for Camilla and was the start of a process that brought Camilla out from the cold and culminated in her being crowned Queen.
Writing in his biography of Sophie Sean Smith wrote that although the Duchess of Edinburgh was at the funeral and was one of the newest members of the firm in Westminster Abbey but there was another person of interest in attendance.
‘The presence of Camilla Parker Bowles was of wider interest at the time,’ Smith said.
However she did not sit with Charles and the rest of the family and instead sat with the friends and staff.
But nevertheless the invitation was, as the Daily Mail’s Editor-at-Large Richard Kay described it, a ‘watershed moment’ for Camilla who beforehand watched the royals only from the sidelines.
Camilla at the Queen Mother’s funeral in 2002. Her presence at the ceremony was a ‘watershed’ moment in her acceptance into the Firm
Camilla during King Charles III’s coronation. Her journey to the upper echelons of the Royal Family was far from straightforward and for many years it wasn’t clear if she would be given the title of Queen upon Charles’ accession to the throne
Smith wrote: ‘She [Camilla] had spent half an hour with the Queen and Charles at the Palace at which it was decided this was the right time for her to be absorbed into things.
‘The private conversation was only the second meeting between the two women – the Queen had been reluctant to acknowledge Camilla officially but had agreed to be seated at the same table for the dinner at Highgrove that celebrated the sixtieth birthday of the exiled King Constantine I of Greece.
‘That had been a huge step forward and this was another.’
After the Queen’s Mother was interred at St George’s Chapel, Camilla travelled to Scotland to be reunited with Charles at Birkhall, which he had inherited on his grandmother’s death.
The house on the Balmoral estate would become what source described ‘as close as it comes’ to being a marital home for Charles and Camilla.
Birkhall was where the couple would also spend their honeymoon but before the couple could get married the King and Queen Consort had to rehabilitate both Camilla’s public image and her place within the Firm.
Much of the decades-long public angst directed at Camilla came from the notorious role she played in the breakdown of Charles’ marriage to Diana. Then, following the tragic death of the Princess of Wales in August 1997, she faced a further torrent of abuse.
It was also the fact that Camilla was seen as the usurper of the much-beloved Princess Diana which led the public to dislike her so much.
King Charles III walks along the procession carrying the Queen Mother’s coffin
The late Queen Elizabeth II and Charles at the Queen Mother’s funeral. This would the second time Elizabeth and Camilla met
Charles with his two sons, Prince William and Prince Harry, walking behind the Queen and the Queen Mother’s coffin as they leave Westminster Abbey
Journalist Tina Brown wrote: ‘And the press went after her with such viciousness. I mean, the really appalling sexist comments about Camilla – I mean, they used to call her, you know, old bag, old trout.’
Once Camilla and Andrew parker-Bowles had divorced in 1995 and and with the finalisation of Charles and Diana’s own divorce a year later the couple were free to start dating privately, with Charles hosting a lavish party for Camilla’s 50th at Highgrove.
The tragic death of Princess Diana in August 1997 and outpouring of grief from the public which followed meant Charles had to pause his efforts to rehabilitate her image.
Charles he then resumed a large-scale PR campaign with Mark Bolland at the helm.
During the spin doctor’s reign in the late 1990s and early 2000s he performed something of a miracle, taking Charles’s own popularity rating from 20 per cent after Diana’s death to 75 per cent.
Bolland also orchestrated the media coverage of the prince’s first photographed public appearance with Camilla at the Ritz Hotel in January 1999 – dubbed ‘Operation Ritz’.
But Charles also had to get the Royal Family on his side.
This started with Prince Harry and Prince William, who met Camilla for the first time in 1998 at Highgrove.
Camilla outside Westminster Abbey. Royal author Sean Smith wrote that Camilla was one of the most interesting people at the funeral
Charles and Camilla on their first public outing together in 1998
During the 1990s Charles and Camilla embarked on an ambitious PR campaign to rehabilitate Camilla’s public image
Harry recalled the meeting in his 2023 memoir ‘Spare’ Harry where he and William reportedly promised Charles they would welcome Camilla into the family.
All they asked of the then-Prince of Wales was to not marry Camilla.
Harry claimed this was because the marriage would ’cause controversy’.
He said: ‘It would incite the press. It would make the whole country, the whole world, talk about Mummy, compare Mummy and Camilla, and nobody wanted that. Least of all Camilla.’
The King did not answer but Harry said Camilla did when she ‘began the long game, a campaign aimed at marriage and eventually the Crown’.
Harry says that details from Camilla and William’s meetings were later leaked to the press. He alleges they came from Camilla.
Harry was far from the only obstacle Charles and Camilla faced in the dramatic history of their relationship.
The late Queen Elizabeth II was one such hurdle. She reportedly described Camilla as ‘that wicked woman’ on one occasion.
Charles and Camilla’s wedding in April 2005
Palace guidance said Camilla would only ever be known as ‘Princess Consort’ – until Queen Elizabeth II ended years of uncertainty over the issue by assuring Camilla’s future status
Her support for their marriage was crucial so that Charles was not removed from the line of succession.
According to Tom Bower’s book Rebel Prince in 1998, around the same time Harry and William met Camilla, Charles spoke to his mother about about welcoming Camilla into the family, which the Queen was not happy about.
Bower wrote that the Queen said she ‘would not condone his adultery, nor forgive Camilla for not leaving Charles alone to allow his marriage to recover’.
By 2000, the Queen indicated her tacit approval of their relationship when she attended a lunch with the pair.
With the late Queen’s approval they married in 2005 but it was far a from conventional affair.
The day was broken up into two sections – with Charles and Camilla taking part in a civil ceremony at Windsor’s Guildhall, where they were legally married, before they travelled to St George’s Chapel for their blessing from the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Camilla also eschewed the Princess of Wales title out of respect for her husband’s late former wife Diana and was known by the rather less grand title of the Duchess of Cornwall instead.
One final hurdle Camilla faced was what her title would be once Charles became King.
King Charles III and his wife Queen Camilla in May 2024
Palace guidance said she would only ever be known as ‘Princess Consort’ – until Queen Elizabeth II ended years of uncertainty over the issue by assuring Camilla’s future status in an historic Platinum Jubilee statement.
In her surprise announcement in February 2022, Her late Majesty declared it was her ‘sincere wish’ for her daughter-in-law to be fully acknowledged upon Charles becoming King.
Since Charles became King, following the death of his mother in September 8 2022, the now Queen Camilla is one of the most prominent members of the Royal Family.
And since she became Queen her popularity with the public has soared to a high of 55 per cent in September 2022.
In the wake of Charles’s cancer diagnosis in February 2024, Camilla took on more engagements and has only seen her support grow.
And Queen Camilla is now an integral and accepted part of the Royal Family.
