The Crown: How Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles’s Relationship Really Started
It’s a famous—and infamous—love story: Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles, married in 2005 after an extramarital affair, their respective high-profile divorces, and, of course, the tragic death of Princess Diana. But before all the tragedy and drama, there were just two twenty-somethings in a budding romance: a young Prince of Wales and Camilla Parker Shand.
That’s the time period captured in Season 3, Episode 9 of The Crown, “Imbroglio.” It’s a dramatic plot point: There’s sex, cheating, and even a plot to keep two lovers apart. But how much of that is real, and how much of it is fiction?
Before we continue—this post contains plot spoilers (although some of it is, well, history). Scroll at your own discretion.
How did Prince Charles and Camilla Shand meet? There are conflicting reports: BBC says a polo match in 1970, but according to Sally Bedell Smith, author of the New York Times best-selling biography Prince Charles: The Passions and Paradoxes of an Improbable Life—the couple was introduced by mutual friend Lucia Santa Cruz in 1972. (Charles also confirmed this to journalist Jonathan Dimbleby.) This rules out one plot point: the love quadrangle. Although Princess Anne was linked to Andrew Parker Bowles (Shand’s on-and-off boyfriend and future husband), their connection didn’t overlap with Camilla and Charles’s courtship. Princess Anne and Andrew Parker Bowles were actually together in 1971. “By the time Charles met Camilla some 18 months later, the romance between Anne and Andrew was in the distant rear-view mirror,” Bedell-Smith tells Vogue. “It’s also a stretch to say that Camilla wanted to ‘get back’ at Andrew for his involvement with Anne. Andrew had plenty of other girlfriends for Camilla to worry about.”
It’s true that Prince Charles fell victim to bad timing. Bedell-Smith recalls that Lord Patrick Beresford, a friend of the couple, told her that Prince Charles “sort of parachuted in the middle” of Parker Bowles’s and Shand’s complicated relationship. “For Charles, it was a coup de foudre. For Camilla, it was an opportunity for a fling while her longtime boyfriend, Major Andrew Parker Bowles, was away. Andrew left England in July 1972 for a deployment in Northern Ireland and Cyprus for six months,” says Smith. Then, there’s the fact that Charles was long scheduled to leave for an eight-month stint in the Caribbean in January 1973. The couple had a six-month romance, kept largely under the radar except for some appearances at polo matches and at the nightclub Annabel’s.
Probably the most explosive storyline in The Crown is that the Queen Mother and Lord Mountbatten plotted to keep the couple apart. It’s entertaining but exaggerated. Lord Mountbatten allowed the couple to spend time at his country estate of Broadlands, where their feelings flourished. In mid-December, before Charles left for the Caribbean, Mountbatten hosted them for a final visit. Plus, says Smith, Mountbatten and the Queen Mother weren’t particularly close.
However, it does seem that the royal family didn’t realize the strength of Charles’s devotion. “Everyone knew about Camilla’s affair with Andrew Parker-Bowles, which had been going on for six years,” Smith recalls. “So to the extent that the royal family was aware of Charles and Camilla, nobody took it seriously.” History can tell you just how wrong they were.
Originally Appeared on Vogue
