For 17 years, Camilla, Queen Consort, has stood dutifully by her husband’s side as the Duchess of Cornwall, embracing the role with energy and grace.
Once perceived as the woman who wrecked Charles and Diana’s fairytale love story, she is now valued as a warm, bold and popular presence in public life.
She passionately campaigns to raise awareness of causes close to her heart, such as osteoporosis – a condition from which her beloved mother Rosalind suffered until her death in 1994 – and she has her own Instagram book club, The Royal Reading Room.
As patron and president of more than 90 charities, including Barnado’s, SafeLives and Battersea Dogs & Cats Home, she has boosted public consciousness on a huge range of issues, including rape, domestic abuse, literacy, child sexual exploitation, animal welfare and poverty.
But like Prince Philip, who was known as Prince Consort during his marriage to Queen Elizabeth – ‘Prince’ rather than ‘King’ so as not to outrank the title of ‘Queen,’ which is historically considered to be lower in rank than ‘King’– she will now be expected to support King Charles III in all he does.
Royal expert Penny Junor, author of a biography of Camilla, The Duchess, explains how Camilla, 75, will operate as Queen Consort...
Camilla will be by King Charles’ side in every role and in every form. The model for her really is the Duke of Edinburgh. Camilla is very much like him – he had no ambition to be a star in any way and he saw his role as being a support to the Queen.
That’s precisely what Camilla is to Charles and will continue to be.
She has no ego and no ambition to be a superstar. She takes on the title of Queen Consort quite reluctantly in a way… because she is not a grand woman. She is a really warm, friendly, normal person.
Likely to be officially crowned Queen Consort next year, at the coronation of King Charles III, the role requires her to support her husband. This will include appearing at public engagements and attending charity events.
While the monarch has official responsibilities relating to the Government, the Queen Consort does not.
Camilla has taken on a range of causes that aren’t necessarily issues that have been embraced by the royals before.
But I feel sure she will continue to support them. Her work on domestic abuse has really brought the issue to the centre of attention and made a difference, ensuring police forces are now taking it seriously.
And she’s with the King for all the right reasons. She loves Charles, she is there to support him and to give him the confidence to be the King. He is not a hugely confident man. He has not had people in his life to tell him how marvellous he is.
Throughout his first marriage to Diana, he felt inadequate because he couldn’t make her happy and that made him deeply unhappy.
But Camilla reads all his speeches, she is interested in his work, she’s out there rooting for him.
That’s been shown just this week with the clip of him in Northern Ireland getting stroppy over a pen that wouldn’t work. She steps in. She’s very good at calming him if he’s in a rage.
Charles is a man who carries the weight of the world on his shoulders and he has a tendency to be quite serious. Camilla comes in with a lightness of touch, makes him laugh and makes him happy.
The granddaughter of Lord Ashcombe, she was born Camilla Shand in 1947 to Major Bruce Shand and his wife Rosalind, whose loving marriage helped shape her into the strong, down-to earth woman she is today.
She was a very secure child growing up. She’s had a hell of a lot of knocks along the way as an adult, but her foundations were rock solid. That is what enables her to be so strong.
She is an incredibly brave woman, too. You have to be jolly brave to come through the way she has – from the affair with Charles, her own divorce, the intimate tapes of her conversations with Charles being made public, the death of Diana, and to marry Charles after all that.
But the most important person who Camilla had to win over following Charles’s divorce from Diana in 1996 was the Queen herself.
The Queen’s issue with Camilla was never personal. She always liked her. But she was a divorcée, someone who had rocked the image of the monarchy to its core.
And she saw Camilla as the person really causing a problem in Charles and Diana’s marriage and it had become a huge issue dividing the country. So she wrongly thought that Camilla had to go.
The Queen had known Camilla for a very long time when she was married to Andrew Parker Bowles. She moved in royal circles and had so much in common with the Queen –they both loved horses and dogs.
Over time, the Queen gradually came to understand how crucial she was to Charles and eventually they became good friends.
What Camilla will do in her new role isn’t yet entirely clear. What is certain is that she will be a Queen Consort like no other.
I believe she will take inspiration from the late Queen to carve out her position. She learned to take a long view and not get overly excited about something that happens today.
And, like the Queen, she keeps a close inner circle of people she trusts implicitly. Everybody who works with her loves her.
Had Camilla and Charles not stayed together, he would not be the man he is today. And if she had disappeared and stepped out of his life when the going got tough, he would not be the King Charles III we see today.
