Prior to their marriage she had been his long-time partner. As the consort of the Prince of Wales she is legally the Princess of Wales; Clarence House has announced that she is officially styled "Her Royal Highness" "The Duchess of Cornwall" ("Duchess of Rothesay" in Scotland). This is mainly because the princely title is so closely identified by the public with her husband's first wife, the late Diana, Princess of Wales. This move has been viewed as both controversial by British constitutionalists, but also necessary as placating the public in order to further acceptance of the Prince's new wife.
Christened "Camilla Rosemary Shand" and known since childhood as 'Milla', HRH spent her early youth in the village of Plumpton, East Sussex, England, where the family home stood opposite the Plumpton Racecourse.
She attended Dumbrells School in Sussex, as well as Queen's Gate School in Kensington; later she attended Mon Fertile, a finishing school in Switzerland.She made her debut in London in 1965. In her youth she worked for a year at the London decorators, Sibyl Colefax & John Fowler.
The Duchess of Cornwall's parents were the late Major Bruce Shand, a British Army officer turned wine merchant, who died of cancer on 11 June 2006, and the late Hon. Rosalind Cubitt, eldest child of Roland Calvert Cubitt, 3rd Baron Ashcombe. Among the Duchess's forebears is Thomas Cubitt, who made a fortune constructing much of London's West End for the Grosvenor family. An aunt is Elspeth Howe, the former chair of the Broadcasting Standards Commission. She has one brother, Mark, and a sister, Annabel.
Before her wedding in 1973 Camilla had been the girlfriend of Prince Charles. However, she was not seen by the Royal Family to be suitable to have the Prince's children, so they were not permitted to marry.
In 1973, the then-Camilla Shand married Andrew Parker Bowles, a Roman Catholic. They had two children together, Tom, born in 1974 and a godson of Prince Charles, and Laura, born in 1978. The children were both raised as Roman Catholics. Tom attended Eton, while Laura attended the Roman Catholic St Mary's Convent School, Shaftesbury. Andrew and Camilla were divorced on 3 March 1995.
According to genealogist William Addams Reitwiesner, her ancestry is French, English, Dutch, and Scottish.
She also has French Canadian ancestors, being the great-great-granddaughter of Sophia Mary MacNab of Hamilton, Ontario and William Coutts Keppel. Sophia was the descendant of immigrants to Quebec in the 17th century and the daughter of Sir Allan MacNab, Premier of the Province of Canada. The couple's son (and Camilla's great-grandfather), George Keppel, married Alice Edmonstone, who would later become the mistress of King Edward VII (great-great-grandfather of Prince Charles). This same lineage makes Camilla a distant relation of Canadian singer Celine Dion, and Madonna.
The Duchess also has Royalty and Royal connection in her ancestry. This includes:
King Charles II of England from his illegitimate son Charles Lennox, 1st Duke of Richmond.
Her great-grandmother, Alice Keppel, who was the last mistress of Edward VII (reigned 1901-1910). Mrs. Keppel's daughter, Sonia, was the Duchess' maternal grandmother.
Arnold van Keppel, 1st Earl of Albemarle, a favourite of William III (r. 1689–1702).
Her great-aunt, Violet Trefusis, the daughter of Mrs. Keppel, who caused a scandal by eloping, in the 1920s, with another woman, fellow writer Vita Sackville-West, when both were married.
Her great-great-grandfather Thomas Cubitt, the Victorian builder.
Through George Keppel, Alice's husband, she is related to Judith Keppel, the first winner of the top prize on the British television game show "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" George Keppel's brother is the great-grandfather of Judith Keppel, making them third cousins, with Sir William Coutts Keppel, 7th Earl of Albemarle and his wife as common ancestors.
The relationship between Camilla and the Prince of Wales began in 1970, after they met at a polo match before either of them was married. Camilla Shand was married in 1973 to Andrew Parker Bowles, an Army officer, friend of the Prince of Wales.
The friendship between the Prince of Wales and the Parker Bowleses carried on after the marriage of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer. Camilla and her husband carried on extramarital affairs during their marriage. It is said that Prince Charles and Camilla became lovers during this time, while her husband Andrew Parker Bowles took a long-term companion, Rosemary Pitman (nee Dickinson), whom he later married.
Charles was at this time Colonel-in-Chief of the Royal Regiment of Wales, in which a junior officer Captain Christopher Elliot had spent two years as an Equerry to the Prince in London, accompanied by his wife Annabel, Camilla's sister. He and his wife re-joined the regiment in Osnabrück, northern Germany, in the early/mid-1970s. Camilla is known to have visited her sister and brother-in-law in Germany. Charles made annual weekend-long visits to the regiment during the 1970s, and it is said that it was during this period that he discreetly resumed his relationship with Camilla.
Captain Elliot retired as a major-general in the early 2000s, having been at one time the youngest lieutenant-colonel in the Army. He and his wife remained close to the Prince of Wales throughout his career. It was Annabel Elliot's birthday party at the Ritz, during one of her husband's many London postings, which provided the first public occasion at which Charles and Camilla allowed themselves to be photographed - the success of the opportunity provided the template for many more.
The Prince's first wife, Diana, Princess of Wales, publicly blamed the relationship between her husband and Camilla for the break-up of the Wales's marriage; privately, the Princess referred to Camilla as 'the Rottweiler'. Diana reported that Camilla had known before she did that the Prince of Wales was going to propose to her. The Prince and Mrs Parker Bowles exchanged presents and used the pet nicknames of 'Fred' and 'Gladys' one to the other. (These were based on their attachment to the British comedy group, the Goons.)
The affair became public knowledge upon the publication of "Diana: Her True Story", followed by the Camillagate scandal (when a racy phone conversation between Camilla and Charles was secretly recorded and published) and Diana's television interview about her failing marriage. These revelations made Camilla unpopular. However, an assertion that Camilla was pelted with bread rolls in a supermarket by shoppers, though often repeated in the media, has been denied by her friends, who suggest that it was a tabloid media invention that has ended up becoming an urban myth.
It is often asserted that the couple's affair had been conducted throughout the Prince's engagement, and that they had been intimate on the night before Charles's marriage to Diana, charges that were unsubstantiated. Though the timing of these tangled relationships has been much discussed and dissected, reliable published reports indicate that they renewed their romantic relationship in the early 1980s, much prior to the timeframe of Diana's involvement with James Hewitt outside the marriage. After the Prince of Wales's public admission, in a television interview with Jonathan Dimbleby, that he had committed adultery, the Parker Bowleses announced their own divorce in 1995. They had been living apart for some time, and Andrew Parker Bowles remarried a year later.
Though she maintains a residence in Wiltshire, the Duchess of Cornwall primarily lives at Highgrove House and at Clarence House, the former residence of the late Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, which is now the Prince of Wales's official London residence. He spent his early childhood in the house, which was the first residence of his newlywed parents, the present Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom and the Duke of Edinburgh. British newspapers reported in early 2005, in articles about the finances of the Prince of Wales, that, even though they were not married at the time, the prince paid for her jewels and designer wardrobe (among the designers are Giorgio Armani and Oscar de la Renta) and the decoration of her two-room Clarence House quarters by designer Robert Kime.
Since the marriage of Charles and Camilla, it has been revealed that they are ninth cousins once removed.
On 10 February 2005, it was announced that Camilla and the Prince of Wales would marry on 8 April 2005 at Windsor Castle with a civil service followed by a Church of England service.
On 4 April, it was announced that the wedding would be postponed 24 hours until 9 April, so that the Prince of Wales could attend the funeral of Pope John Paul II as the representative of the Queen.
The civil marriage ceremony took place at the Guildhall, Windsor, instead of the castle, as a wedding licence for Windsor Castle would have been required and a standard condition would be for it to accept public weddings for a minimum of three years. The service was attended by close members of the couple's family.
The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh did not attend the civil marriage ceremony. The Queen's reluctance to attend a civil marriage ceremony arose from her position as Supreme Governor of the Church of England. The Queen and Duke did attend the Church of England service at St George's Chapel following the civil ceremony (officiated by the Archbishop of Canterbury, The Most Revd Dr. Rowan Williams), and held a reception for the couple in Windsor Castle afterwards.
Following the wedding, the couple travelled to Birkhall, the Prince's country home in Scotland, near Balmoral Castle. The new couple carried out their first royal duties together during their honeymoon. To the surprise of her critics, Camilla's choice of clothes for her wedding day won widespread media praise, with the News of the World calling her outfits 'sensational'.
Since her marriage, Camilla has been known as "HRH" "The Duchess of Cornwall", except in Scotland, where she is styled "HRH" "The Duchess of Rothesay".
Following the royal wedding, the Duchess of Cornwall began to undertake a range of royal duties. Initially, these involved accompanying the Prince of Wales in his official obligations, however the Duchess also began to perform her own solo duties, first visiting a hospital in Southampton. She attended the Trooping the Colour ceremony in London for the first time in June, 2005, and made her first appearance on the balcony of Buckingham Palace afterwards. The following month Camilla accompanied her husband on a visit to St. Mary's Hospital in Paddington, to meet with victims of the July 7 bombings.
Camilla began to participate in overseas visits, starting with, along with Prince Charles, a royal tour of the United States in November of 2005. In March the following year, the couple went on a royal tour through Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and India, throughout which Camilla won praises for her persistence and down-to-earth attitude. The Duchess has also visited Pakistan, Kuwait, Qatar, the UAE, and Bahrain.
On June 8, 2007, the Duchess conducted the naming ceremony for HMS "Astute", the first of a new class of attack submarine for the Royal Navy. Following this, it was announced in September that Camilla would name the new Cunard cruise ship, MS "Queen Victoria".