The queen and Prince Charles seem overjoyed at Camilla Parker Bowles’ elevation to Queen Consort, but so far unknown are the feelings of Prince Harry and Prince William. Indeed, the problematic relationship between Harry, Charles, Camilla and the ghost of Harry’s mother, Princess Diana, was thrown into sharp relief earlier this week.
Harry was taking part in a video chat in which he recalled the ground-breaking determination of his mother to “kick the door open” when it came to HIV and AIDS.
A few hours after that chat was released on Thursday, it was announced that Charles had been struck down with COVID-19, despite being thrice vaccinated and previously infected.
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Harry’s office did not respond to queries about whether he had sent a message of good wishes to his father, with whom he has had an extremely difficult relationship in recent years. At one stage, as he told Oprah Winfrey, his father stopped taking his phone calls, although in recent weeks Charles’ camp have appeared to promote a narrative in which Charles is purportedly acting as a peacemaker between the royals and the Sussexes.
Camilla, meanwhile, who was not sick and had tested negative for COVID, according to her aides, was on an engagement when she was asked by a member of the public how she felt about the queen’s jubilee announcement at the weekend that she wanted Camilla to be the next queen.
“Very honored,” replied Camilla, without missing a beat.
Of course, this week should have been all about Camilla, given her triumphant elevation to the role of queen-in-waiting by Queen Elizabeth II this week, completing a remarkable journey from reviled “other woman” to official strength and stay.
But, by a bitter quirk of fate, Harry was keeping his mother’s memory in the spotlight.
This was thanks to the release of a video chat with Gareth Thomas, the legendary Welsh rugby player who came out as gay in 2009 and revealed he was HIV positive in 2018.
Harry and Thomas were chatting to promote a national HIV awareness and get-tested drive in the U.K. A memory of Diana opening London’s first dedicated HIV clinic 35 years ago was the item Thomas chose to kick off the discussion.
Harry responded: “I could never fill her shoes, especially in this particular space, because of what she did and what she stood for and how vocal she was about this issue, but it’s a converging of all these different pieces. I want to finish the job.”
He spoke about how his mother’s work “was unfinished” saying he felt “obligated to try and continue that as much as possible.”
Speaking of Princess Diana’s taboo-defying outreach to people with HIV and AIDS, Harry said: “What my mum did, and so many other people did at that time, was to smash that wall down, and kick the door open and say, ‘No, when people are suffering, then we need to learn more.’”
Camilla hasn’t so much kicked down the door as waited around politely outside it, not making a fuss, until the royals belatedly opened it a crack and let her in. Yes, she was “very honored” to have received the queen’s benediction, but it’s sure been a long time coming, in which time Camilla has never put a foot outside the line of the done thing.
The contrast between the fearless, sometimes reckless, style of Diana which resulted in her ejection from the family and the cautious fealty of Camilla, which resulted in her acceptance to it, could hardly be more pronounced.
Camilla reportedly first met William on June 12, 1998, when he was 16, the year after Diana’s death. Whatever happened during that meeting led Camilla to emerge afterwards and allegedly say, “I really need a gin and tonic.” But the meeting was reputedly cordial enough. They met again afterwards, and then Harry met her.
Inevitably, relations were strained at the beginning, but a civil relationship grew between the boys and the woman who went from being “the other woman” to their stepmother.
On the occasion of his 21st birthday, just after Charles and Camilla married, Harry said Camilla was “a wonderful woman and she’s made our father very, very happy, which is the most important thing… William and I love her to bits. To be honest with you, she’s always been very close to me and William… but no, she’s not the wicked stepmother. I’ll say that right now.”
Harry cleaves far more closely to his mother’s outlook and ideals than he ever has to his stepmother’s approach to life.
Friends of the royals are open about the fact that Camilla and Harry have never got on terribly well, hardly a great surprise given Diana’s loathing for Camilla, whom she blamed for ruining her marriage.
Diana made her horror at what she saw as Camilla’s cruelty very obvious.
She told Andrew Morton, for example, that meeting Camilla at a party one day she told her: “I know what’s going on between you and Charles and I just want you to know that.”
Diana said Camilla replied: “You’ve got everything you ever wanted. You’ve got all the men in the world fall in love with you and you’ve got two beautiful children, what more do you want?”
Diana said she retorted: “I want my husband… I’m sorry I’m in the way... and it must be hell for both of you. But I do know what’s going on. Don’t treat me like an idiot.”
“They are not a blended family and never have been,” a source who knows the family told The Daily Beast. “Tom [Parker Bowles] is not close with either of the princes and nor is his mother. You have to remember, she didn’t actually ever live with William and Harry. Harry was 21 when they married. She always kept her own house and there was no question of her intervening in the lives of the boys.”
“Harry grew up hearing his mother being less-than-complimentary of Camilla,” says Duncan Larcombe, former royal correspondent for the Sun and a biographer of Harry, “Of course that rubbed off on him.”
Another factor in their fraught relations is that Camilla is understood to have begun living with Charles for extended periods of time around 1997— indeed, it was shortly after a 50th birthday party for Camilla at Charles’ country home, Highgrove, that Diana was killed in the Paris car crash.
Also relevant to Harry’s perception of Camilla as a boy was his beloved grandmother’s attitude to Camilla; although latterly revealed as her biggest fan, for many years the queen refused to speak to Camilla or be in the same room as her.
This cold shoulder, incredibly, was evident even on Camilla’s wedding day. The queen skipped the ceremony to watch the Grand National horse race, and although she made a speech at the reception she reportedly did not exchange a word with Camilla.
And while Camilla may have won the queen over—and even made inroads into the hearts of the famously implacable British public, who, it was revealed this week, approve of her as queen by a majority of 55 to 45—Diana will always be the biggest star in the royal firmament. The intriguing unknown is if Camilla can build her own, very different, brand of mass popularity.
