Friends of Queen Camilla said they “had never seen her so worried” after her husband, King Charles, was diagnosed with cancer.
The friends were speaking to the Daily Mail for an in-depth profile of Camila, who turns 77 today.
One is quoted as saying: “In private people had never seen her so worried. Forget who they are for a second. Look at it from a human level. Her beloved husband was facing a very serious condition. The battle of his life. It was hugely tough.”
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Another friend, speaking about how she opened a cancer care centre before the diagnosis had been revealed, said: “The public had no idea what she was going through. She was speaking to patients, survivors and even the families of those who had lost their lives to this awful disease in front of the cameras. And she didn’t even blink. That takes serious guts.”
The report says that Camilla began finishing letters with the sign-off: “Onwards and upwards!”
The report also gives some insight into Camilla and Charles’ differing approaches to their work, with a source saying, “His Majesty is never one to sit still and do nothing. He always wants to work and even cancer wasn’t going to stop him. But it’s fair to say that his wife hasn’t always been of the same opinion.”
The report adds that Camilla “speaks to her children Tom and Laura most days” and is planning a European vacation with them and their children later this summer, without Charles.
She still speaks “several times a week” to their father, her ex-husband Andrew Parker Bowles, the report adds.
The report says she has a special name for her critics, vociferous on social media, who constantly emphasize the fact of her relationship with Charles while he was married to Diana.
A source tells the Daily Mail: “Yes, there’s a caucus of people on social media who use nasty terms and reference difficult times past, but honestly her attitude to that is they are the unshiftables. Nobody, not least of all Her Majesty, worries about what they are saying.”
