Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
The Duchess of Cornwall (Camilla Rosemary Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly Parker Bowles, née Shand) is a member of the British Royal Family. She is the second wife of Charles, Prince of Wales, heir apparent to the thrones of the United Kingdom and the other Commonwealth Realms. Prior to their marriage she had been his longtime partner. As the consort of the Prince of Wales she is the de jure Princess of Wales; she has, however, chosen to be known as Duchess of Cornwall mainly because the former title was so highly associated with that of the Lady Diana Spencer. She is known as The Duchess of Rothesay in Scotland.
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Early life
The Duchess of Cornwall was born Camilla Rosemary Shand on July 17, 1947, in London, UK. Her parents are Major Bruce Shand, a British Army officer turned wine merchant, and his wife, the late Hon. Rosalind Cubitt, eldest child of Roland Calvert Cubitt, 3rd Baron Ashcombe. Among the Duchess's forebears is Thomas Cubitt, who made a fortune constructing much of London's West End for the Grosvenor family. An aunt is Elspeth Howe, the former chair of the Broadcasting Standards Commission. She has one brother, Mark, and a sister, Annabel.
Known since childhood as "Milla", the Duchess spent her early youth in the village of Plumpton, Sussex, where the family home stood opposite the Plumpton Racecourse. She attended Dumbrells School in Sussex, Queen's Gate School in Kensington as well as Mon Fertile, a finishing school in Switzerland. She made her debut in London in 1965. In her youth she worked for a year at the London decorators Sibyl Colefax & John Fowler.
In 1973 the then Camilla Shand married Andrew Parker-Bowles, a Roman Catholic. They had two children together, Tom Parker-Bowles, born in 1974 and Laura Parker-Bowles, born in 1978, who were both raised (if nominally) as Roman Catholics, particularly when their paternal grandmother, Dame Ann de Trafford Parker-Bowles, was alive. Andrew and Camilla divorced in 1995.
She is said to have lost heavily, along with other Lloyd's of London Names, losing most of her private fortune, an inheritance of approximately 500,000 pounds that was derived mostly from her Cubitt ancestors. She is a dedicated horse-rider and enjoys hunting.
Family history
According to genealogist William Addams Reitwiesner, her ancestry is French, English, Dutch, Scottish, and American. She is descended from several families — Treadway, Barnes, Jones, Goodnow, Allen, Brazier and others — who were living in Massachusetts and Connecticut in the 17th and 18th centuries. She also has French Canadian ancestors and is also a descendant of pre-Canadian Confederation Premier of the Province of Canada, Sir Allan MacNab.
The Duchess of Cornwall is related to three other favourites of the British royal family. She is a great-granddaughter of royal mistress Alice Keppel (the Hon. Mrs George Keppel, née Edmonstone, a daughter of Admiral Sir William Edmonstone), who was the last love of the Prince of Wales's great-great-grandfather, Edward VII; the Duchess was born two months before Mrs Keppel's death. Through George Keppel, she is related to Judith Keppel, the first winner of the top prize on the British television game show, Who Wants to be a Millionaire? George Keppel's brother is the great-great-grandfather of Judith Keppel, making them third cousins once removed.
The Duchess is also a descendant via her grandmother Sonia Keppel of Arnold Joost van Keppel, 1st Earl of Albemarle, a favourite of William III, and of Charles Lennox, 1st Duke of Richmond, the illegitimate son of King Charles II of England by his mistress Louise-Renée de Penancoët de Kérouaille, Duchess of Portsmouth. She is also a grand-niece of Violet Trefusis, a socialite who caused an international scandal in the 1920s by eloping with fellow writer Vita Sackville-West; both were married at the time.
Relationship with the Prince of Wales
The relationship between Camilla Shand and the Prince of Wales began in 1970, when they met at a polo match before either of them were married. It ended a year later, reportedly after the Prince delayed proposing marriage. Camilla Shand was married in 1973 to Andrew Parker Bowles, an Army officer, friend of the Prince of Wales and godson of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother. The couple had two children: Tom Parker Bowles (born in 1974), a food columnist for Tatler who is a godson of the Prince of Wales) and Laura Parker Bowles (born in 1978).
The friendship between the Prince of Wales and the Parker Bowles continued. The Parker Bowles marriage was reportedly an open one - both had extramarital relationships - and eventually Andrew Parker Bowles took a long-term mistress who later became his second wife, Rosemary Parker Bowles.
The Prince's first wife, Diana, Princess of Wales, publicly blamed the relationship between her husband and Camilla for the break-up of the Wales' marriage; privately, the Princess referred to Camilla, with whom she had originally been on affable terms, as "the Rottweiler". Diana reported that Camilla had known before she did that the Prince of Wales was going to propose to her. The Prince and Mrs Parker Bowles bought one another presents and used the pet nicknames of "Fred" and "Gladys" to one another. The Prince's supporters maintained that Diana's "paranoid fixation" over his friendship with Camilla broke up the Wales' marriage.
The romance became public knowledge upon the publication of Diana: Her True Story, followed by the Camillagate scandal (when a racy phone conversation between Camilla and Charles was secretly recorded and published) and Diana's television interview about her failing marriage. These revelations made Camilla so unpopular that, on one occasion, supermarket shoppers pelted her with bread rolls.[1]
Some claim that the couple's affair had been conducted throughout the Prince's engagement, and that they had been intimate on the night before Charles's marriage to Diana. [2] Though the timing of these tangled relationships has been much discussed and dissected, reliable published reports indicate that they renewed their romantic relationship in the early 1980s, much prior to the timeframe Diana got involved with Hewitt outside the marriage. After the Prince of Wales's public admission, in a television interview with Jonathan Dimbleby, that he had committed adultery, the Parker-Bowleses announced their own divorce in 1995. They had been living apart for some time, and Andrew Parker Bowles soon remarried.
Though she maintains a residence in Wiltshire, the Duchess of Cornwall primarily lives at Highgrove House and at Clarence House, the former residence of the late Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, which is now the Prince of Wales's official London residence. He spent his early childhood in the house, which was the first residence of his newlywed parents, the present Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom and the Duke of Edinburgh. British newspapers reported in early 2005, in articles about the finances of the Prince of Wales, that, even though they were not married at the time, the prince paid for her jewels and designer wardrobe (among the designers are Giorgio Armani and Oscar de la Renta) and the decoration of her two-room Clarence House quarters by designer Robert Kime.
Marriage to the Prince of Wales
| Styles of The Duchess of Cornwall |
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| Reference style | Her Royal Highness |
| Spoken style | Your Royal Highness |
| Alternative style | Ma'am |
On February 10, 2005, it was announced that Camilla and the Prince of Wales would marry on 8 April 2005 at Windsor Castle with a civil service followed by religious prayer. On April 4 it was announced that the wedding would be postponed 24 hours until April 9, so that the Prince of Wales could attend the funeral of Pope John Paul II as the representative of the Queen.
The civil service actually took place at the Guildhall, Windsor instead of the castle, due to the constraints that obtaining a wedding licence for the castle would impose. The service was attended by close members of the couple's family. However, the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh did not attend the civil service, with Buckingham Palace explaining that the Queen did not want to overshadow the wedding. Others commented that this was a snub to Charles and Camilla, or explained by the Queen's reluctance to attend a civil wedding due to her position as Supreme Governor of the Church of England. However the Queen and Duke attended the service of religious prayer at St George's Chapel following the civil service, and held a reception for the couple in Windsor Castle afterwards.
Following the wedding, the couple travelled to Birkhall, the Prince's country home in Scotland, near Balmoral Castle. The new couple carried out their first royal duties together during their honeymoon.
After her marriage, Camilla became known as HRH The Duchess of Cornwall and HRH The Duchess of Rothesay (in Scotland) respectively.
Royal duties
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Following the royal wedding, the Duchess of Cornwall began to undertake a range of royal duties. Initially, these involved accompanying the Prince of Wales in his official duties. The Duchess also began undertake her own solo duties, visiting a hospital in Southampton. She attended the Trooping the Colour ceremony in London for the first time in June 2005, and made her first appearance on the balcony of Buckingham Palace afterwards.
Following the July 7, 2005 London bombings, the Duchess accompanied the Prince to visit victims of the attack at St Mary's Hospital in Paddington.
In November 2005, the Duchess accompanied Prince Charles on a royal tour of the United States of America, her first offical international tour as a member of the British Royal Family.
List of styles
The Duchess of Cornwall legally holds the title and technically rank of Princess of Wales as she is the consort and wife of the Prince of Wales, but she does not, by choice, style herself as such, so although the title exists and is held by an individual, it is never used nor referred to. Clarence House announced at the couple's engagement that she wished to use the style of her future husband's subsidiary title, Duke of Cornwall, rather than Princess of Wales, except in Scotland. In Scotland, where Prince Charles is usually referred to as the Duke of Rothesay, she is referred to as the Duchess of Rothesay. Thus although holding the title of Princess of Wales, she is not known as such. Queen Elizabeth II has placed her as the fourth highest-ranking female royal in the United Kingdom Order of Precedence in 2005 (after herself, The Princess Royal and Princess Alexandra, The Honourable Lady Ogilvy) rather than second (as would normally befit a consort to the heir) to strengthen the notion of being a royal duchess rather than a princess.
Camilla's current name, previous names, and styles used of titles acquired upon her marriage into the Royal Family in chronological order are as follows:
- Miss Camilla Shand (until 1973)
- Mrs. Andrew Parker Bowles (1973-1995)
- Mrs. Camilla Parker Bowles (1995-2005)
- Her Royal Highness The Duchess of Cornwall (used everywhere but Scotland) (2005-)
- Her Royal Highness The Duchess of Rothesay (used only in Scotland) (2005-)
Camilla's full titles (but not styles) after her marriage are: Her Royal Highness The Princess Charles, Princess of Wales and Countess of Chester, Duchess of Cornwall, Duchess of Rothesay, Countess of Carrick, Baroness of Renfrew, Lady of the Isles, Princess of Scotland
Clarence House has indicated that when Charles accedes the throne it is intended that she will use the title HRH The Princess Consort, although, as with the example of the Princess of Wales, technically as the wife of a king, Camilla would be Queen.
Coat of arms
On July 17, 2005, the duchess's 58th birthday, Clarence House unveiled a coat of arms for Camilla's use. It impales her husband's main coat of arms to the dexter (viewer's left) with her father's to sinister (viewer's right), all surmounted by her husband's coronet as heir-apparent.
According to reports in the news media, the arms were authorized and granted by the Queen, who was said to have taken a "keen interest" in its development, along with Charles and Camilla; the arms itself were prepared by Peter Gwynn-Jones, Garter Principal King of Arms. [3] However, aside from the invention of a boar supporter (reflecting her paternal arms) for the sinister side, the arms are entirely consistent with the historical heraldic arrangement for a married woman who is not herself a heraldic heiress.
See also
Further reading
- Jonathan Dimbleby, The Prince of Wales, a Biography (Little, Brown and Company, 1994) ISBN 0316910163
Notes
^ . A spokesman for the Department of Constitutional Affairs told the Sunday Times " [Camilla] automatically takes the title Princess of Wales and all the other titles that go with her marriage to the Prince of Wales. The Sunday Times. 03.04.2005
^ While Charles and Camilla were alone together for periods, it was in a room to which other guests and members of staff regularly walked in unannounced. No-one reportedly witnessed any indications of sexual activity and the risks of engaging in such activity in a room where anyone could walk in at any time was highlighted as evidence that no such activity was likely to have happened, contrary to Diana's claims. The Sunday Times. 03.04.2005
References
- "Charles and Camilla Do America". (Nov. 2, 2005). Slate.
- Ginsburg, Marsha (Nov. 5, 2005). "What to know if you encounter a prince or a duchess". SFGate.
- Pierce, Andrew & Gibb, Frances (Feb. 14, 2005). "Camilla might still become Queen". The Times.
External links
- Royal Visit to The White House November 2, 2005
- Royal.gov.uk- HRH The Duchess of Cornwall
- Prince of Wales' homepage- The Duchess
- BBC Article: Profile: Camilla Parker Bowles
- BBC News Online's special section on the marriage of Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall and Prince Charles
- BBC article: Prince Charles to marry Camilla
- Camilla, cousin of Madonna and Celine Dion! - discover Camilla's French ancestors
- Family Ties to the Royal Wedding
| Princesses of Wales dates they were Princess of Wales in brackets |
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Joan of Kent (1361-1376) | Anne Neville (1470 - 1471) | Catherine of Aragon (1501-1502) | Caroline of Ansbach (1714 - 1727) | Augusta of Saxe-Gotha (1736 - 1751) | Caroline of Brunswick (1795 - 1820) | Alexandra of Denmark (1863 - 1901) | Mary of Teck (1901 - 1910) | Diana Spencer (1981 - 1996) | * Camilla does not use the Princess of Wales title, but instead uses her subsidary title, Duchess of Cornwall. |
