Endgame, p.30
Endgame, page 30
The rehabilitation of the mistress could be called a success, a sanitizing process that turned a “Rottweiler” into a duchess. But there was still work to be done, and Camilla, Charles, and their Palace teams continually fueled the engines for different iterations of Operation PB, orchestrating most of them from the shadows. Camilla has also taken matters into her own hands, building relationships with a number of high-profile (and some notorious) media figures. Though former morning TV host Piers Morgan was responsible for some of the most aggressive tabloid coverage about Princess Diana and the royal family during his time as editor in chief of the Mirror and has also spent more than five years attacking the Duchess of Sussex in articles and on TV, Camilla continues to enjoy a close relationship with him. Not even accusations of Mirror journalists hacking the phones of Harry and other high-profile figures during Morgan’s tenure has tempered the friendship. The pair have been close for more than twenty years and enjoy regular chats on the phone and the occasional boozy lunch. In addition to their shared love of East Sussex (they grew up in neighboring villages), they have a mutual disdain for all things “woke” (in its 2.0 sense). Behind closed doors, Camilla usually rolls her eyes when topics such as gender identity, unconscious racial bias, and even veganism are raised. “It’s all ‘lefty nonsense’ to her,” a former aide revealed. “Even gluten-free or dairy-free options on a restaurant menu irk her.”
It seems they might have similar views on Meghan, too. When Piers called the Duchess of Sussex “Pinocchio Princess” and then a “race-baiter” on Good Morning Britain after she admitted that she had suicidal ideations during her time as a working royal (also asserting that there was unconscious bias within the family), it was Camilla who quietly thanked him for defending the Firm. “[Camilla] will never publicly comment on anything or speak ill of others, but she will always know someone who can do that for her,” a former Palace aide told me. “I’ve had some messages communicated to me on behalf of several members of the royal family,” Morgan admitted to Extra TV in April 2021. “I’m not going to go into who it was, but [it was] gratitude that somebody was standing up.”
Even her friendship with legendary actress Dame Judi Dench came in handy when a fifth season of The Crown threatened to knock Camilla’s reputation once again. The (mostly accurate) portrayal of her as a chain-smoking adulteress who made Diana’s life hell saw her popularity tank once again, as viewers were reminded of Camilla’s pre–Operation PB antics. To prevent the negativity experienced during the release of The Crown’s fourth season from happening again, friends in the media (including the Mail group of newspapers, where she enjoys a close relationship with the paper’s owner, Lord Rothermere) activated a defense strategy. The “vicious” series, the tabloid barked on its front pages and website, is bullying the royal family, would have “destroyed” the Queen if she were still alive, is “verging on defamatory,” and should be boycotted. Dench did her bit to help the cause and wrote an open letter in The Times accusing Netflix executives and show producers of blurring the lines between historical accuracy and crude sensationalism, thereby damaging the monarchy. The show should, she insisted, have a disclaimer at the start to “warn” viewers of its fictionalized scenes. It was a curious fight for the usually press-shy actress to take on, especially given her own depictions of the Queen’s great-great-grandmother in the movies Victoria & Abdul and Her Majesty, Mrs. Brown, both of which received some criticism from historians about accuracy.
Though those in Camilla’s world all echo the same high praise when it comes to her sense of humor and mischievous “twinkle in her eye” (both true), one can’t deny that many of these friendships have also served a greater purpose when it comes to the rehabilitation of her image. That prize charm is also how she won over the majority of the royal press pack. While most senior royals tend to largely ignore the gaggle of reporters and photographers at engagements, Camilla is always the first (and often the only) to say hello and give a wink. When the photographers point their lenses, Camilla doesn’t turn away or play hard to get; instead she will ask, “Where do you want me?” She will even give a nudge to Charles at times if she senses that snappers aren’t getting the best shot.
It’s a smart and simple move—especially in the cases of some longtime royal reporters, who harbor a need to be liked by the subjects they write about. Most in the royal rota now sing her praises when given the chance in opinion pieces and documentary appearances. With some, the relationship has gone even deeper. The Daily Mail’s royal editor Rebecca English is regularly the first to be spoon-fed Camilla-related scoops. A canny strategy that has paid off in droves, as the reporter has never written a critical word about the paper’s star royal source since taking the job in 2004. “For Camilla, having a little pet in the [press] pack has been essential,” a former Palace aide revealed. “After the wedding, it was absolutely her mission to make that happen.”
In Spare, Prince Harry revealed his “complex feelings” toward his stepmother. “In a funny way I even wanted Camilla to be happy,” he wrote. “Maybe she’d be less dangerous if she was happy.” That dangerousness, he told journalist Anderson Cooper, comes from her willingness to forge interdependent relationships with the tabloid press and media figures. “With a family built on hierarchy, and with her, on the way to being Queen Consort, there [were] gonna be people or bodies left in the street.” It is no secret that his own body was one of those sacrificed on Camilla and Bolland’s “personal PR altar.” In those earlier days, information about him and his life were currency to curry favor with Fleet Street editors. Today, a similar arrangement with sections of the British press still exists, as Harry’s courtroom revelations have revealed.
Still, the Duke of Sussex also says he sees Camilla as just as much of a victim of the inner workings of a cold institution as any of his other family members. “I have a huge amount of compassion for her, you know,” he said. “She had a reputation, or an image, to rehabilitate. Whatever conversations happened, whatever deals or trading was made right at the beginning, she was led to believe that that would be the best way of doing it . . . [She] has done everything that she can to improve her own reputation and her own image for her own sake.” Even today there is no animosity on Harry’s side. A source close to the Duke of Sussex—who has said he doesn’t consider Camilla an “evil stepmother”—called their relationship “respectful . . . and kept at a safe distance.” Camilla, I’m told, may not feel quite the same. “To say she wasn’t hurt by what he wrote [in Spare] would not be the truth,” said a royal source. “But she won’t retaliate.” A friend and one of Camilla’s “Queen’s companions,” the Marchioness of Lansdowne, told The Sunday Times, “Of course it bothers her, of course it hurts. But she doesn’t let it get to her. Her philosophy is always, ‘Don’t make a thing of it and it will settle down—least said, soonest mended.’”
The marchioness is one of a group of six women Queen Camilla keeps close, in place of what previous female monarchs called ladies-in-waiting. Other “Queen’s companions” include Baroness Carlyn Chisholm, a British peeress and member of the House of Lords; and Lady Sarah Keswick, who has known Charles and Camilla since the first days of their affair. Camilla’s sister, Annabel Elliot, whom she considers her best friend, joined the Marchioness of Lansdowne to serve as “Ladies Attendants” during the May 2023 coronation. Elliot’s appearance made the ceremony somewhat of a family affair for Camilla, whose three teenage grandsons, Gus Lopes, Louis Lopes, and Freddy Parker Bowles, were selected as pages of honor.
Camilla has long enjoyed close relationships with her two children. Her son, Tom Parker Bowles, a restauranteur, is tight-lipped when it comes to talking about Camilla the royal, but he’s the first to sing her praises as a mother. Her roast chicken “with all the trimmings” on a Sunday, with everyone getting together at Ray Mill House, is something they strive to do regularly, no matter how busy everyone gets. “We all love our food and to be able to share that with each other is wonderful,” he told me during an interview. As grandmother to his children, Freddy and Lola, she’s also happy to step in to babysit (something she is “brilliant” at, he said). Despite the fact that they’re now children of the King’s wife, neither Tom nor her daughter, Laura, expect their lives to change. “You’re not going to find us with great estates or being called the Duke of Whatever, no, that would be appalling,” he has said.
In addition to fulfilling her duties as grandmother and pushing overtime to repair her reputation, Camilla has done the necessary work in her role as a senior royal, namely through philanthropic endeavors and awareness raising to help others. In an unassuming way, Camilla has put her energies into more than ninety charities, including grittier, less-glamorous issues that demand more than just ribbon-cutting. The National Osteoporosis Society, a cherished charity for Camilla after her mother died of the disorder in 1994, was renamed the Royal Osteoporosis Society in 2019. The name change was Camilla’s idea, said the charity’s executive Craig Jones, a business-minded decision Camilla believed would give the charity more “clout and credibility.” More clout is important because, as Jones said, “osteoporosis is a difficult cause . . . it’s surrounded by stereotypes and defeatism . . . people think breaking bones is an inevitable part of getting older. Camilla knows it isn’t.” She also passionately raises awareness about domestic abuse, which she rightly calls a “global pandemic of violence against women”; literacy, through her “Queen’s Reading Room” initiative; animal welfare (both of her dogs, Beth and Bluebell, were rescued from the Battersea Dog Home); and loneliness among the elderly. Unable to lean on widespread popularity or tabloid interest in her sartorial choices (blame an ageist society and, by her own admission to an aide, a “less exciting” wardrobe for that), Camilla has carried out many of her charitable efforts without splashy, big-budget campaigns. “She was very explicit with me that she didn’t want [that] and simply let her work speak for herself,” said Julian Payne.
This natural style toward work and her ease in her role has scored Camilla points with the Firm, the public, and influential figures. It has also impressed her husband. In his first address as King in September 2022, Charles had this to say about his other half:
I count on the loving help of my darling wife, Camilla. In recognition of her own loyal public service since our marriage seventeen years ago, she becomes my Queen Consort. I know she will bring to the demands of her new role the steadfast devotion to duty on which I have come to rely so much.
And with that the second stage of Camilla’s royal journey was a success: Camilla, Queen Consort, now sharing her husband’s rank and status. Before she passed away, Queen Elizabeth II promoted the idea for Camilla to take on the consort title before Charles’s ascension, making her wish clear before the Platinum Jubilee celebrations in 2022. Seventeen years earlier, after the couple’s wedding, Palace aides had assured the public that Camilla would only take on the title of “Princess Consort”—an effort to appease a nation that mostly disliked her. But with Camilla having managed to achieve acceptance since then, the late monarch felt it was the right time to put her stamp of approval on an upgraded title. Unbeknownst to the public, that, too, was only temporary. A month before the May 6, 2023, coronation, Buckingham Palace released invitations without the consort styling. The former mistress would now be crowned by the Archbishop of Canterbury as Queen Camilla. Transformation complete.
Ironically, and perhaps hard to believe for some, it was never Camilla’s wish to sit on the throne. Those I have spoken to over the years say she has simply accepted that the role comes with the territory of being with the man she wanted to spend the rest of her life with. Nevertheless, she takes the job seriously. Despite her age, she consistently carries out more engagements than most royals, including Prince William and Kate, the Princess of Wales. She also remains a committed and effective advisor to the King. She can probably say more with a half-raised eyebrow than the rest of his well-informed staff combined (it’s why she was never a fan of Charles’s right-hand man Michael Fawcett—she felt he was the only other person who had his ear as much as she does). An aide close to her has told me that “she doesn’t take herself too seriously. She isn’t lost in a sense of self-importance, but she understands the importance of the institution.” Added a royal source, “To be around her you would never think she is Queen. She’s still the same as she was years ago, friendly with everyone, always up for a natter.”
Payne, who worked for Charles and Camilla for five years, told Times Radio, “She has an innate understanding of the institution but also fifty years of living in the real world. She’s a very good bridge between the two. You see her voice and her impact in all facets of the life of the King and as a couple.”
Whether she wanted it or not—and whether the public wanted it or not (polls at the time of the finishing of this book say a lot of the nation still aren’t sure)—she is now Queen Camilla. And what now appears like an inevitability actually took a lot of backstage maneuvering and horse-trading. While communications campaigns and PR gurus certainly played significant roles in Camilla’s decades-long metamorphosis, it would be a mistake to underestimate her own handiwork in this massive image overhaul. But her long game is finally over, and Camilla and the Palace PR corps can finally file the strategies and plans for Operation PB. Perhaps they’ll come in handy for someone else in the future. She’s come a long way from the Shand family haven in Sussex, but, in many ways, this is exactly where Camilla thought she’d be when she became Charles’s mistress more than forty years ago. Her troubles endured, and her final act planned for all along.
Part II: Kate
Suddenly Front and Center
We’ve all seen the families of the skilled survivors. Their strength comes from within and was put there . . . from their earliest days.
—Diana, Princess of Wales, 1993, keynote speech
It is the nature of stone to be satisfied.
It is the nature of water to want to be somewhere else.
—Mary Oliver, The Leaf and the Cloud
As the final throes of summer tapered into an unusually hot start to the fall of 2019, September’s late afternoons brought longer shadows and slanting light to the hills and woodlands of Surrey. Only twenty-five miles southwest of London, the Royal Horticultural Society’s flagship site at Wisley basked in the warm glow of England’s unseasonably long summer and served as a testament to the wonders of horticulture. The grand gardens cover 240 acres, and its Glasshouse centerpiece, a greenhouse the size of ten tennis courts, was thriving with exotic plants from around the world enjoying the early-autumn sun. An arcadia for anyone with even a passing interest in the natural world, Wisley is home to a world-famous rock garden with a tumbling stream, alpine plants, and a fern grotto, as well as the meandering walkways of the Bowes-Lyon Rose Garden and its four thousand plants. That month, RHS Wisley was also the proud new home of the Back to Nature Garden, a woodland ramble and wildflower meadow for families and children with treehouses, a hollow log, swings, a willow pond, and a large sand pit. The brainchild of Kate, who was then the Duchess of Cambridge, the garden opened on September 10. Just like the usually bashful autumnal sun, Kate, too, was ready to shed her shy side for the garden’s grand unveiling. She visited the garden with Great British Bake Off star Mary Berry to tour the grounds and take part in a host of fun activities with local schoolchildren. “I hope I do this right!” she said with a laugh as she planted a weeping blue cedar sapling in front of photographers in the garden’s family play zone. The natural sprawl of the tree’s drooping branches—which grow outward rather than up—added visual curiosity to the grounds and would eventually provide a den-like structure for children to play under.
In a signature Emilia Wickstead blue floral dress, Kate also gave a speech on the importance of family, friends, and community re-creation in the development of young children. “The physical benefits of being outdoors and in nature are well documented,” she said. “More recently, however, I have learned that these often safe and supported environments can also bring significant benefits to the cognitive, social, and emotional development of our children, too.” The speech underscored Kate’s mission to get children back outdoors. And, unlike public speeches in the past, where she often stumbled on her words, she wasn’t nervous this time. “She practiced it a few times before giving it and was just really at ease,” her communications secretary told me afterward. “I’m definitely seeing a new level of confidence in her.”
Her self-assured demeanor was a world away from four months prior, when she launched her first Back to Nature concept garden at the Chelsea Flower Show in June. To promote that she filmed a surprise appearance on BBC’s Blue Peter, Britain’s longest-running children’s television show. On air, viewers saw Kate wander around the rangy Paddington Recreation Ground in London’s Maida Vale with host Lindsey Russell talking about her passion for the great outdoors and how she constantly encourages her children to spend time outside, “rain or shine.” Smiling, relaxed, and motherly around the local schoolchildren featured in the program, Kate took the small group to “pond dip” for tadpoles, an activity she claimed was “massively up her street,” as well as some old-fashioned fort-building using sticks, logs, and leaves.
But, behind the scenes, it was a different story. Though it was a low-pressure, small-stakes broadcast appearance, Kate was feeling nervous and “well out of her comfort zone” before the taping. “It was just not an area she felt confident in and, up until that point, other household staff hadn’t really pushed her,” a Kensington Palace source said. Naturally timid and introverted, Kate had historically eschewed giving interviews or public speaking, instead finding comfort in engagements that were often led by a host while she quietly followed, giving a speech from a script or teleprompter. She also favored outings that involved interacting with children or sporting activities, where it’s more about her actions than her words.
