People were enraged when she was revealed to be then-Prince Charles’ mistress – and a great deal of that was down to the love people bore for Princess Diana.
As mentioned, Camila’s popularity took a huge blow, though things have changed for the better over the years. Now though, royal expert and author Angela Levin claims that at the time, Camilla was afraid of even leaving her house – and had to endure “torrents” of mistreatment from the public.
King Charles and Camilla’s relationship goes back decades. In fact, their love story can be traced back to 1972, when they first met at a polo match.
In the book Charles and Camilla, Portrait of a Love Affair, author Gyles Brandreth claims that Charles and Camilla were introduced by their mutual friend Lucia Santa Cruz, the daughter of the Chilean ambassador.
The couple dated for a while but stopped when Charles left to serve in the Royal Navy. By the time he returned, Camilla was involved and engaged to Andrew Parker Bowles.
King Charles & Camilla relationship and affair
Bowles and Camilla married in 1973, but Camilla maintained a close and friendly relationship with Charles. Back then, the king had started dating 16-year-old Diana Spencer.
When Diana was introduced to the Bowles couple, Camilla thought the young lady was “sweet and cute” and approved of her. At first, Diana and Camilla got along well. But things soon grew uncomfortable.
“I met [Camilla] very early on. I was introduced to the circle, but I was a threat, I was a very young girl, but I was a threat,” Diana explained in the book Diana: In Her Own Words.
According to Prince Charles’ authorized biography, as quoted by Town & Country, Charles and Camilla’s affair started in 1986. Charles was still married to Princess Diana at that point. She found out about it – and confronted Camilla.
Things for Charles and Diana continued as usual, at least from the public’s perspective. But it wasn’t long before the couple’s fairytale life was over.
In 1992, the couple announced their separation, though both continued with their official royal duties. Four years later, in August of 1996, they reached a final agreement for the divorce.
Infamous Tampongate scandal
By that stage, things had already reached the ears of the public regarding Charles’s relationship with Camilla. And what happened in December 1989 pretty much confirmed that they had actually been having an affair for years.
Just months after Charles and Diana formally separated, the press published a full transcript of a telephone call between the then-future King and Camilla.
The phone call revealed an intimate and sexual exchange between the couple. But, according to The Diana Chronicles, the person who recorded it had kept it for himself for years.
As one can guess, the public reaction wasn’t positive. Firstly, Princess Diana was a national icon and loved by all, and the idea of Charles going behind her back and causing her harm didn’t sit well with anyone.
The scandal involved the future king – just hearing him say things like “live inside her trousers” was wholly unexpected and considered inappropriate. According to Sally Bedel Smith, author of the biography Elizabeth the Queen: The Life of a Modern March, a poll was released shortly after the transcript was published.
Sixty-eight percent of the respondents said that then-Prince Charles had destroyed his reputation, and 42 percent even thought that Prince William should become the monarch after Elizabeth.
Charles confronted the Queen over Camilla treatment
But all that happened didn’t only hurt Charles. Camilla also got her fair share of criticism – both from the public and Royal Family members.
The phone call that took place in 1989 more than confirmed that Charles had engaged in an affair with Camilla while still married to Diana. It also proved that Camilla had cheated on her husband, Andrew Parker Bowles.
In the beginning, Camilla was, unsurprisingly, not particularly popular among the public. Neither was she any kind of favorite of Queen Elizabeth’s.
In 2018, investigative author and journalist Tom Bower claimed that, at first, the Queen didn’t want any interaction with Camilla.
At the time of Diana’s passing, there was an ongoing campaign to “introduce” Charles and Camilla’s relationship to the public. However, that was promptly abandoned in the wake of Diana’s deth.