King Charles III and Queen Camilla.Photo:Dan Kitwood/Getty Images
Dan Kitwood/Getty Images
Queen Camillalooked tense asQueen Mary’s crownwas carefully placed on her head at thecoronation. And she had every good reason to be so, according to a close relative.
Sara Parker Bowles says that her former mother-in-law Queen Camilla found it hard to take the formal ceremony in stride in a new interview withThe Times.
“Camilla was really, really nervous. She wanted the people that she loved around her,” says Sara, who was married to Camilla’s son, food writer Tom Parker Bowles, for around 15 years. “[The King] wasn’t nervous at all. But Camilla didn’t ask for any of this.”
Sara added, “She’s the human face of the royal family because she’s not part of it. You need those outsiders really.”
Queen Camilla in Northern Ireland in May.Chris Jackson/Getty Images
Chris Jackson/Getty Images
For the woman who was so famously the “third person” in the marriage of the then-Prince CharlesandPrincess Diana, as the late Princess of Wales put it in 1995, the journey to her 2005 marriage to Charles and to the throne had been bumpy.
In fact, Camilla was once among the most vilified in Britain around the time when Sara met and married Tom Parker Bowles.
“It was still the hate years,” Sara toldThe Times."[Camilla] wasn’t accepted at all. She didn’t talk about it. She was just very brave and uncomplaining.”
And her former daughter-in-law reveals Tom was concerned for his mom that the vitriol she bore at the time of Princess Diana’s split from Charles might rear its head again whenQueen Elizabethdied in September.
“Tom was worried it would happen all over again when the Queen died, but it has been the opposite,” Sara said.
Queen Camilla at her coronation and detail of her gown.Jonathan Brady - WPA Pool/Getty; Andrew Matthews - WPA Pool/Getty
Sara spoke toThe Timesas she launched her wardrobe-streamlining business,Wardrobe Revivals. She uses her experience of 20 years as a fashion editor to carry out online consultations about how to get the best from what’s in her client’s closet.
Sara is mother to two of the Queen’s grandchildren: Freddy, 13, and Lola, 16. She says Freddy — who was a Page of Honour at the coronation and, like all of her grandchildren — had his named embroidered on hercoronation dress— “wanted to go in the gold carriage, but he didn’t get to. Then his face on the balcony — I could see he was just like, ‘Woah!’ "
Then Freddy, who calls Camilla “Gaga,” showed a little mischievous touch. “My favorite part of the whole day was that he did a little wave that he wasn’t supposed to," Sara says.
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For the family, there are subtle changes in atmosphere now that Queen Camilla (whocelebrated her 76th birthdayon Monday) and King Charles' royal statuses have changed. Vacations at the couple’s Scottish home had been relaxed, she said. “Birkhall was never glamorous. But it all feels different now. It’s who we are, but it does feel different.”
source: people.com
