Tomorrow marks 20 years since Charles and Camilla emerged from St George’s Chapel in Windsor as a newly married couple.
The wedding was 35 years in the making and, naturally, the newlyweds were beaming with happiness as they posed for pictures on the steps of Windsor Castle and greeted well-wishers on a royal walkabout.
It was far from a conventional affair, with the day broken up into two sections – with Charles and Camilla taking part in a civil ceremony at Windsor’s Guildhall, where they were legally married, before they travelled to St George’s Chapel for their blessing from the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Nevertheless, the wedding dubbed a ‘fairytale for grown-ups’ was a seamless affair without any hitches.
Even the weather held up with the party enjoying a beautiful spring day.
However, in the couple’s long and windy journey down the aisle they faced opposition from senior members of the Royal Family, mainly from Charles’s youngest son Prince Harry.
In his 2023 memoir ‘Spare’ Harry claimed that he and William pleaded with their father to not marry Camilla.
‘We support you, we said. We endorse Camilla, we said. Just please don’t marry her. Just be together, Pa,’ Harry wrote.
Charles and Camilla on the steps of St George’s chapel following their marriage. Tomorrow marks 20 years since the couple said ‘I do’
In Charles and Camilla’s long and windy journey down the aisle they faced opposition from senior members of the Royal Family, mainly from Charles’s youngest son Prince Harry
Charles and Camilla greeting well-wishers following their marriage. The wedding was dubbed a ‘fairytale for grown-ups’
Prince Harry with his mother Princess Diana in 1995. Harry claims that he pleaded with his father to not marry Camilla
The conversation between the father and his sons came after William and Harry formally met Camilla at Highgrove in 1998 a year after their mother – Diana Princess of Wales – died in a Paris car crash.
After the meeting, Harry revealed that he and William reportedly promised Charles they would welcome Camilla into the family.
All they asked of the then-Prince of Wales was to not marry Camilla.
Harry claimed this was because the marriage would ’cause controversy’.
He said: ‘It would incite the press. It would make the whole country, the whole world, talk about Mummy, compare Mummy and Camilla, and nobody wanted that. Least of all Camilla.’
The King did not answer but Harry said Camilla did when she ‘began the long game, a campaign aimed at marriage and eventually the Crown.’
Harry says that details from Camilla and William’s meetings were later leaked to the press – which he alleges came from Camilla.
Harry was far from the only obstacle Charles and Camilla faced in the dramatic history of their relationship.
Charles and Camilla’s official wedding photograph. It was a wedding 35 years in the making and naturally they were beaming with happiness
Prince William and Prince Harry outside the Guildhall in Windsor following the civil wedding ceremony of the then-Prince Charles and Camilla
Queen Elizabeth II with Prince Philip during the wedding. The late Queen did not attend the civil ceremony although she was at the religious blessing
The late Queen Elizabeth II was one such hurdle whose support for the marriage was crucial so that Charles was not removed from the line of succession.
According to Tom Bower’s book Rebel Prince in 1998, around the same time Harry and William met Camilla, Charles spoke to his mother about about welcoming Camilla into the family which the Queen was not happy about.
Bower wrote that the Queen said she ‘would not condone his adultery, nor forgive Camilla for not leaving Charles alone to allow his marriage to recover’.
He also claimed that the Queen referred to Camilla as ‘that wicked woman’.
By 2000, the Queen indicated her tacit approval of their relationship when she attended a lunch with the pair.
And she did eventually give the couple permission to marry. However, the Queen did not attend the civil ceremony although she was at the religious blessing.
Camilla and Charles also faced opposition to their relationship from the wider public.
Following the collapse of Charles and Diana’s marriage in 1992, Camilla was seen as a homewrecker who had destroyed the Prince and Princess’s relationship.
Charles and Camilla, arms linked together, leaving St George’s Chapel with the Queen close behind
Charles and Camilla leaving their civil wedding ceremony before they received a blessing from the Archbishop of Canterbury
Camilla showing off her engagement ring in February 2005
Speaking to Vogue in 2022 Camilla said: ‘I was scrutinised for such a long time that you just have to find a way to live with it.
‘Nobody likes to be looked at all the time and, you know, criticised… but I think in the end, I sort of rose above it and got on with it. You’ve got to get on with life.’
To rehabilitate Camilla’s image Charles launched a large-scale PR campaign with Mark Bolland at the helm.
During the spin doctor’s reign in the late 1990s and early 2000s he performed something of a miracle, taking Charles’s own popularity rating from 20 per cent after Diana’s death to 75 per cent.
Bolland also orchestrated the media coverage of the prince’s first photographed public appearance with Camilla at the Ritz Hotel in January 1999 – dubbed ‘Operation Ritz’.
Harry wrote in Spare, that he was collateral damage in the campaign to rehabilitate Charles and pave the way for his marriage to Camilla, though ‘the new spin doctor, Camilla had talked Pa into hiring’.
Unnamed in the book, although widely understood to be Bolland, he describes a character who meticulously choreographed those early first steps towards Charles’s non-negotiable ambition: to reign with Camilla seated on the throne beside him.
During the run up to their wedding, the couple attended a number of public events together and Camilla also moved into Clarence House establishing her as Charles’ closest confidant.
Charles and Camilla at their religious blessing inside St George’s Chapel
In his 2023 memoir ‘Spare’ Harry wrote that he was collateral damage in the campaign to rehabilitate Charles and pave the way for his marriage to Camilla
Charles and Camilla together in 1999. To rehabilitate Camilla’s image Charles launched a large-scale PR campaign with Mark Bolland at the helm
Once the wedding day arrived in 2005 it was an uncontroversial affair although it did face some last minute bumps in the road to the aisle.
It had to be delayed by 24 hours at the last minute when the Queen asked Charles to represent the crown at the funeral of Pope John Paul II and Camilla was reportedly suffering from a heavy cold.
By the time the couple were seen outside St George’s Chapel the newlyweds were the picture of happiness.
And despite Harry’s claim in Spare that ‘weddings were joyous occasions, sure, but they were also low-key funerals’, the day was an enjoyable one with the Queen giving a humorous speech making reference to the wedding clashing with the Grand National.
And in spite of Harry’s claim that the marriage would cause controversy, 20 years on Camilla has become an integral and accepted part of the Royal Family.
This culminated in Queen Elizabeth II issuing a statement voicing her support for Camilla to receive the title of Queen Consort upon Charles accession to the throne rather than Princess Consort.
King Charles III and Queen Camilla on the balcony of Buckingham Palace following their Coronation on May 6 2023
Since Charles became King following the death of his mother in September 8 2022, the now Queen Camilla is one of the most prominent members of the Royal Family.
And since she became Queen her popularity with the public has soared to a high of 55 per cent in September 2022.
In the wake of Charles’s cancer diagnosis in February 2024, Camilla took on more engagements and has only seen her support grow.
In contrast, Harry – who stepped down as a senior royal in January 2020 – has seen his popularity slip behind that of Camilla.
