Did Prince Harry and Camilla Parker Bowles Ever Have a Good Relationship?
Prince Harry‘s memoir Spare has dropped and as expected, it contains some criticisms of his stepmother Camilla, Queen Consort (formerly Camilla Parker Bowles).
Even before excerpts were leaked and Harry spoke about his father’s second wife in interviews during his promotional book tour, many believed that Camilla herself wasn’t going to be “spared” from the duke’s wrath. Given what Harry has revealed about the queen consort in his book, some are questioning if Camilla and her youngest stepson ever had a good relationship.
Prince Harry previously said Camilla’s not the ‘wicked stepmother’ and he ‘loves her to bits’
In February 2005, then-Prince Charles announced that he and his longtime love were engaged. Many Britians were still wary of Camilla and not fully accepting of Charles’ decision because of the part she played in the downfall of his marriage to the late Princess Diana. Royal fans also couldn’t help but wonder what Prince William and his brother must have been feeling.
Prince Harry then decided to put to bed all the talk about a sour relationship with Camilla and really helped her out in the court of public opinion telling Harry: Conversations with the Prince biographer Angela Levin: “To be honest, she’s always been very close to me and William. She’s not a wicked stepmother. Look at the position she’s coming into. Don’t feel sorry for me and William, feel sorry for her.
“She’s 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.”
The Duke of Sussex called the queen consort ‘dangerous’
But nearly two decades later, Prince Harry changed his tune about a loving relationship with his stepmom. In his 60 Minutes interview with Anderson Cooper Harry claimed that he and his older brother asked their father not to marry Camilla.
And speaking about Camilla’s reputation before she married Charles, the Duke of Sussex said: “She was the villain, she was a third person in the marriage, she needed to rehabilitate her image.
“The need for her to rehabilitate her image … that made her dangerous because of the connections that she was forging within the British press. And there was open willingness on both sides to trade information and with a family built on hierarchy, and with her on the way to being queen consort, there was going to be people or bodies left in the street because of that.”
In Spare, Harry says: “I had complex feelings about gaining a step-parent who, I believed, had recently sacrificed me on her personal PR altar. In a funny way I even wanted Camilla to be happy. Maybe she’d be less dangerous if she was happy?”
Harry and Camilla were never tight, they just tolerated each other
Charles and Camilla tied the knot on April 9, 2005, and both brothers have always put on a united front with their stepmom in public. But according to royal author Christopher Wilson, things between both Charles’ sons and the former Duchess of Cornwall have always been a bit icy despite how they act toward each other when cameras are rolling.
“Though to all outward appearances she has the support and friendship of Prince William and Prince Harry, privately there is a distance,” Wilson wrote via the Daily Mail.
Moreover, Harry seems to be conveying now through his words that despite what he said just before his father’s wedding, he and Camilla never really had a good close relationship. And Princess Diana’s friend former Vanity Fair editor and author Tina Brown wrote in her book The Palace Papers that she doesn’t believe that William and Harry ever warmed up to Camilla.
“One carefully managed myth peddled by Mark Bolland [Charles’ public relations executive] was that the boys had warmed to Camilla. But they tolerated her at best,” Brown said, adding, “In his early 30s, Harry was still complaining bitterly to friends that Camilla had converted his old bedroom at Highgrove, Charles’s Gloucestershire estate, into an elaborate dressing room for herself.”
