Category: Camilla Parker Bowles

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‘The Crown’ Season 6 will show a ‘completed rehabilitation’ of Camilla Parker Bowles

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One of the most disappointing aspects of The Crown has been “the rehabilitation of Camilla Parker Bowles.” Camilla was up to some disgustingly shady stuff in the 1980s, ‘90s and ‘00s. Arguably, she still is up to a lot of bullsh-t, but now it’s at a different level. The Crown glossed over Camilla’s role in gaslighting and emotionally abusing Diana, how often Camilla was the one briefing friendly royal reporters about Diana and Charles’s marriage, and how Camilla basically wouldn’t leave Charles alone even in the first years of his marriage. While I’m not giving Charles a pass – he was a grown man who chose to use a teenager as a broodmare – but Camilla bears a responsibility equally. Just not in The Crown. For some reason (??) Peter Morgan is really tiptoeing around everything to do with Camilla, and the final season will be no different. In fact, the final season is probably going to be all about “a fully rehabilitated Camilla.”

There has been much speculation about why The Crown will end with the events of 2005 rather than raking over more recent – and perhaps most controversial – royal dramas. But one well-placed insider insisted there was no need for writer Peter Morgan to go any further because the sixth and final series, which begins next month, neatly links viewers with the present day. By ending with the wedding of Charles and Camilla, The Crown encapsulates the newly crowned Queen’s completed rehabilitation.

“People are always asking Peter if he’s going to write a sequel,” the source said. “He doesn’t need to because those last five or six episodes bring you right up to the present day. You’re actually watching this rehabilitated Queen Camilla figure.”

The forthcoming series will be split into two parts, the first largely dealing with the death of Diana, Princess of Wales and the second, its aftermath. It depicts Charles’ efforts to win around his mother so he is able to marry the then Camilla Parker-Bowles with the help of PR supremo Mark Bolland. The final episodes will show the late Queen’s initial refusal to meet her son’s partner, including her notable absence from Charles’ star-studded 50th birthday party at Highgrove in November 1997, three months after Diana died.

However, she was eventually won over and Mr Bolland carefully choreographed the first steps towards public acceptance, including a much-publicised first appearance together as they left a party at The Ritz in 1999.

As The Crown draws to a close, the late Queen, who once allegedly referred to her future daughter-in-law as “that wicked woman”, will be shown toasting the happy couple at their wedding, where she compared their relationship to her beloved Grand National. Welcoming her son and his bride to the “winners enclosure”, she said: “They have come through and I’m very proud and wish them well. My son is home and dry with the woman he loves.”

On bringing the story full circle, one Netflix source said the late 1990s and early 2000s were “crucial years” for the King and Queen’s tumultuous relationship. When Camilla became Queen, it marked the culmination of the job that Mr Bolland started. Referring to the Coronation, the source added: “The marriage in 2005 was the seed of everything that’s just happened in the last few months.” The next series will cover Charles’s 50th birthday party – which in real life had an Arabian Nights theme – complete with a 1970s disco band.

[From The Telegraph]

I guess I totally blanked out the timeline and that birthday party gossip, but did Charles honestly throw himself a huge “Arabian Nights” themed birthday party just three months after Diana’s death? Holy f–k, that’s in poor taste. Yes, they were divorced when Diana died, but still, wait six months to a year before you throw yourself a giant party? As for the Rehabbed Camilla, again, Charles has spent thirty years and millions of dollars/pounds to rehabilitate this gin-soaked horse. All of that time, money and effort, and Camilla is still a deeply unpopular queen who is only being propped up by her chummy relationships with the literal dregs of the British media. Peter Morgan got roped into Camilla’s circle too, at least that’s what it sounds like.

Photos courtesy of Netflix/The Crown and Cover Images.

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Camilla Parker-Bowles converted Prince Harry’s bedroom into her closet

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From what we’ve seen so far of the leaked excerpts from Prince Harry’s Spare, there’s no love lost between Harry and his stepmother, the now queen consort Camilla. Now, Harry isn’t really ripping into Camilla, but he’s talking about how he and William both had major qualms about their father’s relationship with Camilla, how they both considered her to be a snake, how Camilla waged PR campaigns to marry Charles and throw his sons under the bus. Much of which we already knew/assumed, and I can’t wait to read the whole book to see how Harry weaves in the Camilla stories. For now, this one takes the cake: when Camilla moved into Clarence House, she immediately converted Harry’s old room into her closet.

In Prince Harry’s forthcoming memoir, “Spare,” out Tuesday, the royal recalls the time Camilla Parker Bowles (now the Queen Consort) allegedly converted his bedroom at Clarence House in London into her own personal dressing room as soon as he moved out.

“I tried not to care. But especially the first time I saw it, I cared,” the 38-year-old Duke of Sussex wrote.

A similar incident is mentioned in Tina Brown’s book “The Palace Papers” — although curiously, Brown wrote that it was Harry’s old bedroom at King Charles III’s country home, Highgrove House, that underwent the transition from bedroom to closet.

[From Page Six]

Camilla is such a cow. Is Clarence House really that cramped for space that Camilla *needed* to convert Harry’s room? If there’s one thing we know about Camilla, it’s that she’s a petty, manipulative cow. This was Camilla way of “punishing” Harry for something (existing).

One thing I hope Harry clarifies in Spare is his evolving living situation pre-Meghan, pre-Nottingham Cottage. Because it definitely feels like Harry was forced to bum around between St. James’s Palace, Clarence House and NottCott and he rarely felt like he actually had one place which was actually “his.” They probably would have (and did) put him in the servant’s quarters. Once again, that man now owns a mansion in Montecito. He’s never going back.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, WENN, Cover Images.

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Dominic West: Camilla Parker Bowles ‘was not a marriage-breaker’

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While Peter Morgan and The Crown are always a tad too generous with how they cast the “Prince Charles” role, they’ve gotten it bang-on with casting actresses for Camilla Parker Bowles. Emerald Fennell played Camilla in Seasons 3 and 4, and I thought she was great at showing why she would appeal to Charles, and she showed Camilla as a real schemer too, manipulating both Diana and Charles. In the two new seasons, Camilla is played by Olivia Williams and once again, inspired casting. They tossed an unkempt ashy-blonde wig on Olivia and told her not to moisturize and it’s PERFECT. In Season 5, you really get how Camilla was just, at that time, a suburban mom with connections, openly carrying on with a married man. According to Dominic West and Olivia, Camilla is a sympathetic figure because… she was just a woman in love, and sometimes life is messy, I guess.

As for how the divorce will be portrayed, Dominic believes The Crown will be ‘more even-handed and fairer than the newspaper coverage at the time’. Olivia Williams, who takes over from Emerald Fennell to play Camilla in season five, agrees saying, ‘I don’t think it’s something the Palace should be frightened of. Peter Morgan is very careful to always turn these events back to how they affect the crown [not the individuals]. The series if called The Crown, not Charles or Diana.’

West added: ‘Hindsight is a wonderful thing. At the time, when we were thinking about this divorce as it happened – there was an enormous sense of grievance in the public that this fairy-tale had been destroyed. I think now we realise Camilla was not a marriage breaker, she was not someone who was trying to deny us this fairy tale – she was just someone who was in love.’

Camilla, now the Queen Consort, has always been a divisive figure due to her role in the breakdown of Charles and Diana’s marriage. But Olivia believes the new season will dispel ‘the trope of the marriage breaker that the press fed at the time’.

‘Anybody who has a perspective on divorce knows that the whole blame game becomes irrelevant,’ says Olivia. ‘And maybe now we see that [Charles and Diana’s] marriage wasn’t a great idea in the first place. I say that without any disrespect to any of the families involved – as Dominic says, hindsight is a valuable thing.’

Reportedly, season five of The Crown will include a recreation of the infamous ‘tampon-gate’ phone call, when intimate conversations between Charles and Camilla were leaked – no doubt a moment that the royals would rather forget.

‘Back then, a lot of what we learn about Charles and Camilla seemed in some way sordid, or not very appealing,’ says Dominic. ‘Very often it was a gross invasion of their privacy which feels very squeamish now – when you could read the text of their phone conversations, or ring up a hotline and listen to their phone conversations.’

Despite this, both Dominic and Olivia were struck by the romance between Charles and Camilla. ‘What we learnt playing those times and those events – was how actually rather sweet they were together and how romantic it was,’ says Dominic.

[From Grazia]

I genuinely disagree with this, but I find it interesting that Olivia and Dominic both seem to be arguing that the “original sin” was Charles and Diana’s marriage in the first place, that they were unsuited for each other and they both had every right to look elsewhere. But what I’m reminded of is not that Charles simply wanted to have an affair with Camilla, it’s that he was in love with Camilla throughout his courtship with Diana and throughout their marriage. Camilla was the “original sin” of Charles and Diana’s marriage. Camilla kept him trapped, but make no mistake, Charles kept going back to Camilla by his own choice too. People always criticize Diana for not being “okay” with Charles cheating on her, but it was perfectly clear that Charles was incapable of keeping up with the appearance of a happy marriage. It wasn’t enough that he was unfaithful, it was also that he treated Diana like sh-t, publicly and privately. Camilla knew exactly what she was doing too. Anyway! Rottweiler Apologia, I think not.

Photos courtesy of Netflix/The Crown.

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The finale of ‘The Crown’ Season 6 will be Charles & Camilla’s 2005 wedding

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Currently, The Crown’s Season 6 is in production, filming in Europe. Season 6 will pick up with Tony Blair’s victory and quickly move into Princess Diana’s death in Paris later that summer. It will be interesting to see how Peter Morgan handles the subject matter now, considering he’s “revisiting” that storyline as the screenwriter for 2006’s The Queen, directed by Stephen Frears. Obviously, Season 6 will go through most of Tony Blair’s years as prime minister. What’s interesting is that Peter Morgan now insists that Season 6 won’t go all the way through until 2007, when Blair stepped down. Morgan has been telling people that the series will end on a high note for King Charles III: Charles and Camilla’s 2005 wedding in Windsor.

It will trawl through one of the Royal family’s darkest and most tumultuous periods. But the sixth and final series of The Crown will end on a high for King Charles when it is released next year, show insiders have insisted in the wake of a slew of criticism.

The last episode will depict the wedding of Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles in April 2005, highlighting what proved to be a notable turning point for the monarchy and leaving viewers with a feel-good, positive image of the institution. The dramatisation of the civil ceremony at Windsor Guildhall will bring the curtain down on one of the most successful yet controversial dramas in recent history.

The final series, which is currently being filmed and is likely to be released next November, will turn its spotlight on the “adventures and misadventures” of New Labour. A source told The Telegraph that a “chief focus” will be the premiership of Tony Blair. It will also cover the death of Diana in a Paris car crash and chart the lives of Prince William and Prince Harry in the immediate aftermath of their mother’s death. The series will depict Queen Elizabeth II’s thawing towards her future daughter-in-law.

For the King and Queen Consort, as they are now, such celebratory scenes and a focus on largely positive developments will come as a welcome relief.

Writer Peter Morgan said he could not continue beyond the early 2000s as he believed that there should be at least a decade between a real-life event and its fictionalised retelling in order to gain “proper perspective”. He is said to have become irked by the recent criticism, having been keenly focused on historical research and determined not to convey events purely to be “sensational”.

A source defended the high-budget drama, arguing that the Royal scandals dramatised by Morgan were of the family’s own making.

“He purposely seeks to dramatise historical events as they happened,” they said. “He can’t change history, he reflects it – hence the controversial content of season five that is currently under discussion. Royal events took an upward turn post-1997 and, thankfully, a return to political events, so The Crown can return to that.”

[From The Telegraph]

“The series will depict Queen Elizabeth II’s thawing towards her future daughter-in-law…” WHO? Are we talking about Sophie, Countess of Wessex? That would be the only “future daughter in law” around this time frame (Sophie and Edward married in 1999). I find it curious that Morgan would end the series in 2005 and not 2007 though. What is he afraid of? Having to dramatize Prince William and Kate’s infamous 2007 breakup? Anyway, let’s be real – Charles and Camilla’s 2005 wedding was not the beginning of some grand new royal storyline, it simply put a bow on the sh-tshow that was and is Charles and Camilla’s relationship.

Photos courtesy of Netflix, WENN and Avalon Red.

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Andrew Parker Bowles carried out a ‘royal duty’ on his ex-wife’s behalf

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The thing you always have to remember is that the British royal family and the British aristocracy are incredibly incestuous. They’ve all slept together, they all live in the same places, they all go to school together, and after they’ve screwed around with each other for decades, their children get married and the whole cycle starts again. That’s what I was reminded of when I looked for photos of Andrew Parker Bowles, the first husband of the current queen consort. Camilla was married to Andrew Parker Bowles from 1973 through 1995. Andrew didn’t mind the fact that his wife was banging Charles throughout their marriage. That was simply de rigueur for that time and that class. Even as Camilla carried on with Charles, she reportedly had a warm, happy marriage to Andrew, and they only divorced because the full scale of her affair was exposed. As a divorced couple, Andrew and Camilla are still reportedly quite close. Andrew always remained close to the Windsors as a whole, and as you can see from these photos, he still spends time with Princess Anne (his former lover). Andrew is apparently still so close to Camilla that he’s now tasked with “representing” her at the funerals of their friends.

As Harry and Meghan are 5,000 miles away in California, and Prince Andrew is banned from polite society, the King’s vision of a ‘slimmed-down’ monarchy is looking too skinny. So step forward a new member of ‘The Firm’.

I can reveal that Brigadier Andrew Parker Bowles carried out his first royal duty on behalf of the Queen Consort on Tuesday. He formally represented his ex-wife at a funeral — and friends claim it could be the first engagement of many.

‘Andrew is happy to do anything he is asked,’ one of his friends tells me. ‘He still enjoys a warm relationship with Camilla.’

The news was recorded in the Court Circular, the official record of royal engagements.

‘The Queen Consort was represented by Brigadier Andrew Parker Bowles,’ it says of his attendance at the funeral of John Bowes-Lyon at the London Oratory. Bowes-Lyon, who died last month aged 80, was a second cousin of the late Queen.

Formally representing Camilla meant Parker Bowles, 82, was given a prominent pew at the Roman Catholic church.

[From The Daily Mail]

If you look at Andrew Parker Bowles’s story from Camilla’s perspective, he might seem like a pitiful figure, giving up his wife to the heir to the throne. But the truth is that Andrew cheated on Camilla constantly and that his wandering eye was a big reason why Camilla pursued and maintained the affair with Charles so thoroughly. Before Tina Brown got coopted by the palace machinery, she always maintained that Andrew – not Charles – was the one Camilla always wanted. Anyway, I doubt this is anything more than an ex-wife asking her former husband to go their mutual friend’s funeral.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.

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Duchess Camilla ‘didn’t have a career before’ marrying Charles, ‘she wasn’t interested’

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As we discussed, there are easily six major royal books/biographies coming out over the next three months. All of them seem to have one purpose: to poison the well ahead of Prince Harry’s memoir. I’m sure there are other purposes too, but it’s almost like the entire royal-commentary establishment has admitted that they know Harry’s book sales are going to blow their book sales out of the water. Sure, they’ll be selective about how they report the sales too, but they’re scared. Scared and delusional. Which brings me to Angela Levin, who has written a new “biography” of the Duchess of Cornwall. Levin is batsh-t crazy and I can’t believe she’s still a fixture within royal-commentary circles. Well, Levin is already shilling for her Camilla book, and she admitted something sort of interesting: Camilla never had a job. She never wanted to work. She just wanted to party and sleep around.

Camilla Parker Bowles had an “astonishing” change of lifestyle after she married Prince Charles.

The 75-year-old Duchess of Cornwall has been married to The Prince of Wales since 2005, after they wed in a ceremony at Windsor Guildhall. And her biographer claims that since then, The Duchess of Cornwall has had an upheaval in her entire lifestyle to revolve around royal duties, that other members of the firm wouldn’t partake.

Angela Levin authored the upcoming biography, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall: From Outcast to Future Queen Consort, where she exclusively reflected to The Daily Star how much Camilla has changed over the years for her lifestyle she was previously used to.

She explained: “I think she has at the age of 57, when she married Prince Charles, it’s absolutely astonishing that she could change her life so completely. She didn’t have a career before. She wasn’t interested. She just liked to read, go to parties, and have fun. And she wasn’t brought up to think in any other way. But she has changed enormously for the better. And the more she’s done in the world of charities, the more she wants to do.”

[From The Daily Star]

It’s true – Camilla never had a career, really. In her early 20s, she worked as a secretary but she got fired for being lazy and showing up to work late. She married Andrew Parker Bowles at the age of 26 and immediately retired to the country to be a housewife. After Andrew divorced her, she didn’t work and Charles financially supported her and bought her Ray Mill. Charles’s advisors always complained about Camilla’s laziness too. I mean… Levin is sort of right when she says “she wasn’t brought up to think in any other way.” Camilla wasn’t titled, but she was a well-connected aristocrat who wasn’t brought up to work. Wealthy women of her generation were expected to have a limited education and then get married to someone suitable and “well-bred.” Honestly, this is what the Duchess of Sussex faced when she entered that world too – they could not believe that they were faced with a Black woman who was well-educated, self-made and successful on her own terms. Meghan was literally and figuratively foreign to them.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.

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Duchess Camilla: Prince Philip ‘was always a very good ear, he was a role model to me’

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The Duchess of Cornwall covers Australian Women’s Weekly, only this cover shot is just the same photo taken by the Duchess of Cambridge for Country Life magazine (which Camilla guest-edited). It seems Country Life made some kind of arrangement with AWW, where AWW got to use the same photos of Camilla, and then AWW got an exclusive interview with Camilla. From my limited knowledge of Australian publications, I always thought AWW was kind of a tabloid? Maybe I’m thinking of another magazine. Anyway, Camilla’s 75th birthday/image-rehabilitation continues unabated. She even name-drops Prince Philip in this interview:

Prince Charles’ wife, who turns 75 this month, sat down with Juliet Rieden of The Australian Women’s Weekly last month (on the busy day of Trooping the Colour!) to chat about everything from her childhood in the country to her future as Queen Consort. During the interview, Camilla also reflected on her relationship with Prince Philip, who died in April 2021 at the age of 99.

“The Duke of Edinburgh was always a very good ear,” Camilla said. “He was a role model to me and a very good person to take advice from because he always told me what he thought.”

As a consort to his wife Queen Elizabeth, Prince Philip no doubt provided Camilla with an idea of her role when Prince Charles becomes monarch one day.

Camilla also revealed that there’s a part of royal life that still makes her nervous.

“I get petrified making speeches,” she shared.

In a joint arrangement with Country Life magazine, the image of Camilla that appears on the cover of The Australian Women’s Weekly was taken by Kate Middleton. They also shared an exclusive photo of Camilla, also shot by Kate, where the Duchess of Cornwall smiles as she leans against a fence in the garden of her home Raymill in Wiltshire. (Camilla sported her go-to accessory — her FitBit! — for the occasion.)

[From People]

I didn’t even pick up on the fact that Camilla is wearing her FitBit in the photo. That’s interesting, I guess. As for Camilla being petrified of making speeches… I’ve watched her speeches over the years, and while she’s not the second coming of Winston Churchill, she’s totally fine. She seems more comfortable talking to smaller groups, but who knows. I think it’s really funny and obvious that Camilla is using Prince Philip’s memory to embiggen herself. I mean, she will be the consort, just like Philip. They would have stuff to talk about, and it’s not like Philip hated Camilla or anything, he just never could understand why Charles was so enamored with Camilla and not Diana. I seriously doubt Philip and Camilla had some kind of secret friendship though.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, cover courtesy of the Duchess of Cambridge/AWW.