Photos of Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, show that she was still smiling through the years, even if she was (for a time) one of the most controversial, talked-about royals of them all.
Born 17 July 1947 at King’s College Hospital, London, Camila was the first child of Major Bruce Shand and his wife Rosalind Cubitt. He was christened Camilla Rosemary, and soon joined him in the family home by a brother, Mark, and his little sister, Annabel. She went to a village school in East Sussex and took part in equestrian gymkhanas (a type of horse racing).
Camilla was later to classes at the Queen Anne’s Gate in London, and after a season of learning French in Paris, Camila returned to London, where he became a rookie and was a very popular figure on the circuit social. She worked as a secretary, too, and in his free time he kept his passion for riding. Her romance with the Prince of Wales is believed to have started around 1971, but the two were separated when Charles was on a tour with the Royal Navy. Camila began to see an ex-boyfriend, Andrew Parker Bowles, and the two were married in the Guards Chapel in the Barracks of Wellington in London in 1973.
Camila remained in royal circles, but for much of the 1970s and ‘ 80s, his life was taken away from the camera lens. She raised her two sons, Tom (born 1974) and Laura (born in 1978), but she became a household name around the world when his relationship with the Prince of Wales was made public in the 1992 book Diana: Her True Story and salacious newspaper reports that it was global. Camila became a hated figure by some as the “War of the Wales” it exploded, but in the wake of his divorce (and that of Charles and Diana), Camilla began to appear in public in his prince side. However, she took a much lower profile for several years after the tragic death of Diana in a car accident in 1997.
Prince Charles, however, had stated that his relationship with Camilla was “non-negotiable”, and in the decade of 2000, the pair made an increasing number of public appearances, paving the way for her engagement announcement, which came in February 2005. They were married in a civil ceremony in Windsor on 9 April 2005, followed by a blessing in St. George’s Chapel later that same day. Camilla official real-life, with the title of Duchess of Cornwall, had begun.
Since then, it has become a prominent member of the royal family with an impressive agenda of their own. Camilla has a passion for the subjects, including literacy and support to victims of domestic abuse, and she has had a real impact with their work in these areas. Its real history has been far from a fairy tale, but here are some of the images that show how Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, was still smiling as her regal story is developed.
