Camilla Parker Bowles was born on 17 July 1947 in London. She celebrated her 77th birthday in the summer of 2024.
Camilla Rosemary Shand grew up in East Sussex with her little sister, Annabelle, and her brother, Mark.
Camilla's father, Major Bruce Shand, was a British army officer, and her mother, Rosemary, was a stay-at-home mum.
During her coming-out party, debutante Camilla Shand met Kevin Burke, who was a bit older. The couple stayed together for a year.
Then-Prince Charles, 22, and Camilla Shand, 24, reportedly started seeing each other in 1971, when she was already involved with Andrew Parker Bowles, whom she met in the 1960s.
Camilla Shand and Prince Charles were introduced by a mutual friend, Lucia Santa Cruz, in 1971. She reportedly joked about their ancestors' history, as her great-grandmother was his great-grandfather's mistress, saying:
‘Now you two be very careful. You got genetic antecedence.’
According to mutual friends, Prince Charles fell in love immediately with young Camilla Shand. They said:
'Charles loved that Camilla smiled with her eyes as well as her mouth, and laughed at the same silly things he did. He also liked that she was so natural and easy and friendly, not in any way overawed by him, not fawning or sycophantic.'
According to a friend of the couple, Prince Charles was not allowed to marry Camilla Shand when they started dating, as she was ‘not aristocratic enough’ and had dated other people before.
Despite their relationship ending when Prince Charles left for the army, and before Camilla married Andrew Parker Bowles, the pair remained close. Even when he started dating Diana Spencer in 1980…
Camilla Shand married Andrew Parker Bowles on 4 July 1973, at the Guard's Chapel. The couple then welcomed two children together, Tom and Laura.
Over the years of their respective marriages, Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles stayed secretly together. He admitted to cheating on his wife Diana during an interview in 1994, two years after his separation.
In 1993, a private phone conversation between Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles dating back to 1989 was leaked to the press, while they were both still married to other people.
While rumours about the affair had been circulating for years, this was proof that the couple was secretly seeing each other. The conversation's explicit intimate details was soon all over the country's newspapers, with some calling the ‘Tampongate’ or the ‘Camillagate’.
Camilla and Andrew Parker Bowles got divorced in 1995. Prince Charles and Lady Diana got divorced a year later, allowing Charles and Camilla to finally be together.
Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles waited a few years before making their relationship public. They first appeared as a couple in 1999, being seen attending Camilla's sister's birthday party together.
After waiting their whole married lives to be together, Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles eventually moved in together, in the Prince's estate of Clarence House, in 2003.
Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles got married in 2005, with all their respective children in attendance.
Camilla Parker Bowles became a grandmother for the first time in 2007 when her son Tom welcomed his daughter Lola with his wife Sarah. They went on to have another daughter, Eliza.
Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles made their first official royal visit together in 2009, in Canada, four years after their wedding.
On 23 April 2014, Camilla's brother Mark Shand was attending a fundraising campaign for his charity when he fell and hit his head. He was rushed to the hospital but sadly died of his injuries. In a statement, Charles and Camilla wrote:
‘The duchess, the Prince of Wales and all her family members are utterly devastated by this sudden and tragic loss.’
Mark Shand wrote several books about travelling, especially in India.
He was married to Clio Goldsmith, and the couple welcomed a daughter together, Ayesha.
Both Camilla Parker Bowles and her husband Prince Charles attended Mark Shand's funeral. The duchess was seen distraught, and she could count of her partner's support during the ordeal.
In 2016, Camilla Parker Bowles was appointed to the Privy Council, which is a group of the monarch's closest advisors, by Queen Elizabeth II herself.
Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles celebrated their 15-year anniversary in 2020, right in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic.
In 2022, only a couple of months before her death, Queen Elizabeth II made it clear that her daughter-in-law would become Queen Consort when she takes the throne.
During her husband's coronation, Camilla was also crowned and she became Queen Camilla.
In 2023, Queen Camilla announced she founded a nonprofit organization called the ‘Reading Room’ book club, which aims to instill the taste of reading in both children and adults.
In 2024, King Charles announced he had to put his official engagements on hold as he focused on his health. Queen Camilla has filled in for him on several occasions.
While she has been filing in for her husband, Camilla has had her own fair share of health struggles in 2024. In November, she cancelled events after struggling with a chest infection. She also fueled speculation about her health, earlier in the year, when she took a week off unexpectedly in March.
Despite the ups and down of their lives, King Charles and Queen Camilla seem closer than ever.
Now aged nearly 80, she is often seen having a laugh with her husband, and they still visit countries on official events together.
