On her honeymoon cruise Diana found photos of Camilla in her husband’s calendar book and flew into a rage. “Why don’t you just face up to the truth and tell me it’s her you love and not me?” she cried, stricken with the awful knowledge.15 Suffering from bulimia, Diana raced to the toilet to vomit.
After the birth of Prince Harry in 1984 and three years of marital fidelity, Charles, frazzled by Diana’s violent temper tantrums, ran back into the arms of Camilla. Diana—convulsed at the realization that her husband had never loved her—sought comfort in affairs of her own, but never found a long-lasting relationship. Her venom-spitting hatred of Camilla as the individual responsible for all her sufferings never faded with time. Perhaps Diana, looking in the mirror at her glamorous beauty, knew it couldn’t be Camilla’s looks that had seduced Charles away from the marriage bed; worse than that, it was something that Diana lacked inside that Camilla had, and the bitter knowledge rubbed salt in her aching wound.
But Charles would endure far worse than his wife’s tantrums. On January 13, 1993, the British press reported a cell phone conversation between Charles and Camilla. The sexually explicit conversation made clear that Camilla had been his mistress for some time. The “Camillagate” tape was played over and over on television and radio around the world. The public was outraged; public opinion of the royal family dropped to an all-time low.
It didn’t help that Charles had expressed the desire to be reincarnated as Camilla’s Tampax. Foreign press called him the Tampax Prince, and British women began calling tampons “Charlies.” Humiliated and reviled, Charles seriously thought of relinquishing his position as heir to the throne and leaving the country.
The prince’s blackest moment came when Camilla’s elderly father, Major Shand, demanded a meeting with his daughter’s seducer, whom he harangued for ninety minutes. “My daughter’s life has been ruined, her children are the subject of ridicule and contempt,” the major roared. “You have brought disgrace on my whole family.”16
It was a far cry from the father of Madame de Montespan, who, upon hearing that his daughter had become Louis XIV’s mistress in 1667, cried, “Praise be to God! Here is a stroke of great good fortune for our house!”17
What had happened in the intervening three centuries? A great deal. For one thing, the financial rewards of a royal mistress today are severely limited, nor does she have an accepted position at court. Before the French Revolution, Diana would have found herself and Camilla, having been created a duchess, stuffed into a carriage with Charles between them. Camilla would have officially welcomed foreign ambassadors, while an unruly Diana may well have been locked in a tower. Camilla would have far outstripped Diana in jewels and gowns, in the number of rooms she possessed in their joint palace, in her power and influence.
Second, the modern royal mistress has no political power whatsoever—as her prince has none himself and therefore nothing to share. The Camillas of the world no longer stride down palace corridors to attend council meetings, make laws, and appoint generals, ministers, and ambassadors. Nor do they have influence over literature and the arts. Their position is much the same as that of a nineteenth-century mistress, kept discreetly in the background, the illicit sex acceptable as long as no one finds out about it.
Third, the modern royal mistress and her prince have a new enemy. More intently following the trail of royal indiscretions than the most jealous wife, the press does battle with telephoto lenses and secret recording devices, capturing the most intimate moments, then waving their war trophies about for all the world to see. History offers us not a single recorded cell phone conversation between Louis XIV and Madame de Montespan in which His Most Christian Majesty wishes he were a tampon, or photos of Nell Gwynn sunbathing topless in her walled garden near Whitehall Palace. It is most certainly our loss.
No wonder the reactions of Major Shand and Madame de Montespan’s father were so different. But if Camilla suffers the nuisances of the modern royal mistress, she has dispensed with a different set of inconveniences that beset her predecessors. She is not expected to hunt boar in the rain and suffer interminable carriage rides with no chamber pot in sight. She has not caught smallpox in the palace or syphilis from Prince Charles, nor has she died birthing a royal bastard. Though if she had a choice between the intrusions of the press and the horrors of former centuries, Camilla might prefer to take her chances with smallpox.
After his bruising confrontation with Major Shand, Charles seemed to be giving up Camilla to appease public opinion and regain his honor. But he soon found, once again, that he simply couldn’t do without her. Camilla swept back like an inevitable returning tide, only to ebb out to sea once more after Diana’s tragic death in a car accident in 1997. However, Charles and Diana’s eldest son, Prince William, soon invited Camilla to tea. William and his brother Harry asked her to accompany them and their father on a Mediterranean cruise in 1999.
Recently Charles has said that his relationship with her is nonnegotiable. Periodically, they attend public events together, during which it is quite noticeable that her appearance has been professionally resculpted. Hairdressers have tamed her frizzy horse’s-mane hair. Makeup artists have taught her the most flattering secrets of their trade. Couturiers have suggested sleek dresses, which she adorns with tasteful jewelry. The remodeling work has turned Camilla from frumpy to elegant.
Camilla and Charles’s relationship has now lasted an astounding thirty-four years—longer than that of Emperor Franz Josef of Austria and Katharina Schratt. Camilla, like Katharina, is winning points through her sheer endurance. We might all envy such a long-lasting relationship still sizzling with sexual passion. Her position is greatly aided by the acceptance of the young princes, who love their father deeply and want him to be happy. Even Queen Elizabeth II is warming to her.
In 2002 the Church of England, wrenching itself uncomfortably into the mid twentieth century, agreed to permit divorcées with a living ex-spouse to remarry in the church. This means that now Charles and Camilla can marry with the blessing of the church—something that Edward VIII and Wallis could not have done. If Charles and Camilla did marry, when he becomes king she would automatically become queen, barring a special act of Parliament making the marriage morganatic. If public opinion supports the couple, the British cabinet would be unlikely to object to the marriage.
However, a 2002 survey in Britain found that 52 percent of the people would not wish for a Queen Camilla. Softening the blow a bit, some 57 percent felt it would be acceptable for Charles and Camilla to live together once he becomes king. This couple certainly shows more wisdom in waiting for public opinion to change than Edward VIII and Wallis Warfield Simpson did in their catastrophic rush to the altar.
It is possible that Camilla will remain the prince’s unofficial consort for many years. If Camilla does marry Charles, she will certainly fare better than her predecessors. Chances are she will not get her head cut off, like Anne Boleyn. Nor is she likely to be torn to pieces, like Queen Draga of Serbia, though at the height of the Camillagate scandal a battalion of women pelted her with rolls at the supermarket. She will certainly, however, be hanged, drawn, and quartered in the press.
The New Trend in Royal Marriages
The reasons for a prince to marry a virgin princess no longer exist. The ancient tradition of keeping royal blood “pure” by marrying into like families resulted in the spread of insanity and hemophilia throughout European royalty. Not only is royal blood not superior to that of commoners, it may very well be genetically inferior because of centuries of inbreeding. If we could but look at this sanctified substance under a microscope, we might well be shocked at how many components are missing.