Theirs has been a great royal love story, but it hasn’t always been described as such. In Tatler’s June issue, Hardman speaks with those closest to the King and Queen, including the Princess Royal and Annabel Elliot, as he delves into their incredible relationship

The King and Queen have just – and very happily – marked their 20th wedding anniversary. Yet it is astonishing to see how far the couple have travelled since that spring day at Windsor two decades ago. Theirs has been a great royal love story – one dating back more than 30 years before their wedding day – though that was not how it was described in April 2005. The most widely used word at the time was ‘jinxed’. The wedding plans had been hit by so many unforeseen problems that bookies were offering odds of 33:1 that Camilla would not turn up at all.

Here, though, was a bride made of sterner stuff; one whose response to a crisis was
(and is) to adhere to the Churchillian doctrine of ‘KBO’ (Keep Buggering On) rather than to complain. And 20 years on, we have heard barely a batsqueak of matrimonial discord. Writing my biography of the King, I unearthed a few endearing bones of contention. The King likes bracing fresh air at all times, even in midwinter. The Queen likes her radiators on high. ‘I was at Birkhall the other day and it was like a Highland spa,’ says one friend. ‘You go into her study, and it’s a sauna, with everything turned up. Then you go into his, with all the windows open, and it’s straight into the ice pool.’

The couple also part company over lunch. He regards it as a superfluous combination of time-wasting and gluttony, while she is the proud patron of the charity The Big Lunch. However, since his cancer diagnosis, she has managed to get him to consume something in the middle of the day – ‘even if it is not what you or I would call lunch’, adds one of his team.

In fact, his accession to the throne has brought them closer than ever in so many ways, from her encouraging his new-found interest in flat racing and his dotty devotion to his new puppy (the truffle-hunting lagotto romagnolo called Snuff, which she gave him for Christmas) to embracing the leading roles in big state occasions.

The transition from the longest-reigning monarch in history to the longest-serving apprentice occurred with remarkable smoothness. There had been no lengthy period of uncertainty as in the last days of Victoria. Equally, there had been none of the shock felt when George VI had died while his heir was on another continent.

In 1952, Britain waited 10 months to hear the new monarch. In 2022, it was 24 hours. Court mourning lasted 15 weeks back then. In 2022, it was over in seven days. Here was a King in a hurry, well aware that business needed to resume as soon as possible.

Those who had predicted a wobble or moment of self-doubt from the new King were completely wrong. He had a very clear sense of what he was going to do, and that involved Queen Camilla every step of the way. She, in turn, was the ‘rock’ he needed at this defining moment. So say all the family.

‘Her understanding of her role and how much difference it makes to the King has been absolutely outstanding,’ the Princess Royal told me. She added that she was in ‘no doubt that made the difference for him’ as he took charge. ‘I’m sure lots of people do say to her what a difference she’s made, but that is really true. I’ve known her a long time off and on, and I think she’s been incredibly generous and understanding.’ Praise indeed from the only member of the Royal Family who has been active in public life for as long as the King (the princess started undertaking royal engagements straight out of Benenden in 1968).

Annabel Elliot still finds it impossible to curtsey to her elder sister but nonetheless is still amazed by the way she has taken to her role. ‘Obviously for him, it was always going to be,’ Annabel told me. ‘But I think she’s transitioned beautifully, actually. I mean, I sometimes look at her and I can’t really believe it.’

Why, then, the idea that their marriage was jinxed? That Camilla might not even turn up for her own wedding?

This was a love match which had survived year after year of the British media at its most intrusive and judgemental, and was still going strong. The prince and Camilla had first been introduced in 1971 at the flat of his university friend and confidante Lucia Santa Cruz, daughter of the Chilean ambassador to London. After a short romance, the prince went back to sea with the Royal Navy whereupon, to his dismay, Camilla married Household Cavalry officer Andrew Parker Bowles. The prince had gone on to marry Lady Diana Spencer in 1981 and, with the arrival of Princes William and Harry, royal fortunes seemed set fair for another generation.

But by the early 1990s, the cracks in the Waleses’ marriage were being laid bare thanks to Andrew Morton’s Diana: Her True Story (written, it later emerged, with her assistance). The couple’s 1992 separation was followed by the prince’s 1994 on-camera admission to ITV that his marriage had ‘irretrievably broken down’ and that his relationship with Camilla had resumed. A year later, Martin Bashir used forged documents to lure Diana into her devastating Panorama counterblast. Nine months on, the Waleses were divorced. The next summer, the world mourned Diana’s death in a car crash.

A relationship strong enough to survive those slings and arrows was probably going to last. Yet, for Charles and Camilla, even private gatherings had to be handled with extreme sensitivity.

Their first joint outing after Diana’s death came more than a year later, in the autumn of 1998, when they both attended the London wedding of Simon Sebag Montefiore and Santa Palmer-Tomkinson. Even then, they sat apart and travelled separately to the reception at The Ritz. Three months on, they were back at the hotel for Annabel’s 50th birthday party and left together. The flash from the massed ranks of photographers was so powerful that the British Epilepsy Association had to slap a health warning on television footage.

Yet, it would still be another six years before the couple, the Queen and the church felt that the country was ready for a new chapter. The obstacles seemed relentless.

For a start, the future Supreme Governor of the Church of England could not remarry in a church. Since the prince and Camilla were both divorcees, it would need to be a civil wedding. However, there had already been questions over its legality after those pesky journalists had discovered that the 1836 Marriage Act, which legalised civil marriages, excluded royalty. A former attorney general, the Lord Chancellor and the Registrar General were all dragged into a debate which was ultimately resolved in favour on the grounds of human rights.

The prince’s staff had considered holding the marriage ceremony inside Windsor Castle, but they had not done some fairly basic homework. Granting Windsor Castle a licence to hold civil ceremonies would mean that it would then have to be a public wedding venue for a period of three years – and Queen Elizabeth did not want Windsor becoming Gretna Green or Las Vegas. So, the couple would need to marry at Windsor Guildhall on 8 April 2005, prior to a service of blessing at St George’s Chapel. Mindful of reservations and the legal debate, the Queen had decided she would skip the civil ceremony, but attend the blessing.

The invitations had all gone out and the guestlists sorted when there was an awkward faux pas as the prince took his sons on a pre-wedding skiing trip at the end of March 2005. During
the mandatory photocall, a boom microphone caught him berating the press – ‘bloody people’ – and, in particular, the BBC’s royal correspondent Nicholas Witchell (the pair have long since patched things up, by the way). That aside was nothing compared to what followed days later. After the death of Pope John Paul II on 2 April came the news that the Vatican had scheduled the funeral for the day of the wedding. As heir, the prince would be expected in Rome, as would the Archbishop of Canterbury – who was also due to preside over the blessing at Charles and Camilla’s wedding.

The newly weds visiting the historical Badshahi Mosque in Lahore, 02 November 2006

 ARIF ALI/Getty Images
So the wedding was postponed for 24 hours, with the prince and his bride squeezed into a morning slot at the Guildhall between three other couples. Media commentators asked what else could possibly go wrong. Yet, by the end of that same day, there was a palpable sense that the monarchy had turned a corner. Suddenly, the glitches were forgotten. I remember the mood at Windsor, where I was part of a team making the BBC documentary series The Queen’s Castle, with our final episode going to air the next evening. We captured a carnival atmosphere inside the castle as the newlyweds departed, watching Princes William and Harry warmly kissing their new stepmother and hurling confetti over the happy couple. They then chased the wedding car – which they had decorated with shaving foam and balloons – across the Quadrangle, shouting a Royal Family in-joke through the car window: ‘Thanks for coming!’

At which moment, we sought the thoughts of that shrewd and much-missed courtier, Lt-Col Sir Malcolm Ross, the Comptroller. ‘We have celebrated the start of something very, very remarkable,’ he reflected, ‘and those who were here today will never forget it.’ Revisiting those moments on YouTube, it’s clear that Sir Malcolm was spot on.

Queen Elizabeth had been very much in charge right to the end, cheerfully appointing a new prime minister two days before her death. The new King gripped the role from the start, flying down to London with Camilla the next day to deliver that moving broadcast to the nation – ‘may flights of angels sing thee to thy rest’. Now officially known as the Queen Consort (used until Coronation Day), Camilla chose a corner of the Blue Drawing Room where she could see the King recording his message, but he could not see her. ‘She knew the whole thing would set her off,’ one of those in the room told me, ‘and she didn’t want to set him off.’

Queen Elizabeth II and the then Prince of Wales, followed by the Duke of Edinburgh, the Duchess of Cornwall and Princes William and Harry, at a private reception for Charles’s 60th birthday, 2008

She has gently tweaked her own role, notably in dispensing with the centuries-old system of ladies-in-waiting, now replaced by a less formal cohort of ‘Queen’s Companions’. She has also quietly developed her circle of fellow First Ladies, some royal (Queen Rania of Jordan) and some not (Brigitte Macron) to build on shared charitable endeavours, like her campaign against domestic and sexual violence, captured in a recent ITV documentary. Her devotion to the written word, through her Reading Room, her work on literacy and her support for several book-related charities, has made her a formidable figure in the literary world, so much so that the King enjoys dropping in on her literary receptions at Clarence House.

The couple still have their separate boltholes. On weekends, the King might retreat to his beloved garden at Highgrove (or, increasingly, to Windsor, where he is now the Ranger of the Great Park). Queen Camilla will decamp to Ray Mill, the Wiltshire home she has had since the end of her first marriage. ‘It’s the one place where she can put her feet up on the Aga, the grandchildren can run riot and she doesn’t have to worry they’ll break some priceless work of art,’ says a good friend. Her children, Tom and Laura, are regulars with their young families. No one says ‘Ma’am’, let alone ‘Your Majesty’. As Annabel points out: ‘She’s “Ga-Ga” and I’m called “Guy-Guy” – a pair of mad old women. The children think it’s hilarious.’

King Charles III gives his address thanking the members of the House of Lords and the House of Commons for their condolences, at Westminster Hall, London, following the death of Queen Elizabeth II on September 12, 2022

In London, she is more than content to be at Clarence House, which may make for some amusing trouble ahead. ‘She has made it abundantly clear she has no wish to move into Buckingham Palace when the refurbishment is done,’ whispers one of the team. She has also made it clear to her small and fiercely loyal private office that it is a priority to maximise her public work now, fully conscious that itineraries will inevitably have to wind down when she is in her eighties.

Posing before a State Banquet in Berlin on Their Majesties’ first state visit to Germany in March 2023

 Chris Jackson/Getty Images
The last year has been tough. While the King’s cancer treatment has been public knowledge from the start, few appreciated quite how unwell the Queen became towards the end of 2024. Following her return from the autumn royal tour of the Pacific, the ‘chest infection’ which led to her withdrawal from several key events was later revealed to be pneumonia. That led to post-viral fatigue, followed by a bad cold.

So much has changed in 20 years. ‘When I think back to the start of 2005,’ says one close friend of both, ‘if you had told me that he would even be allowed to remarry, that he’d go on to be a very popular King, that she would even be called “Queen” and that the country would be happy with that, well, I’d have said you were mad. But here we are.’

For all the health and domestic challenges in the royal orbit of late, there is a contentment and a confidence about the place, nowhere more so than at Birkhall, which staff routinely refer to as ‘the marital home’. Two decades ago, after that momentous day at Windsor, this was where the couple chose to spend their honeymoon. Looking back, those bookies could not have been more wide of the mark.

Robert Hardman is the author of the new biography Charles III: New King. New Court. The Inside Story, and writes for the Daily Mail. This feature was first published in the June 2025 issue of Tatler, which goes on sale 1st May

Phillip Butah