They may seem crazy to us today, but there were some very important reasons why Charles didn’t marry Camilla when they first got together
Why Didn’t Charles Marry Camilla in the First Place?
Updated on Mar. 24, 2025
On a perfect summer day in 1981, Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer tied the knot in a fairy-tale wedding watched by 750 million people. The dress was massive, the stakes were high, and, as Diana herself later admitted, it was the worst day of her life. Why? Because Charles was already in love—with someone else. The woman he truly wanted to marry wasn’t Diana. It was his ex, Camilla Parker Bowles, whom he eventually had an affair with and, decades later, married. So why didn’t Charles marry Camilla in the first place and save everyone the trouble and heartache?
“It’s just not that simple,” says Carolyn Harris, PhD, a royal historian and the co-author of English Consorts: Power, Influence and Dynasty. “There were many reasons why Charles and Camilla did not marry in the 1970s, soon after they first met.”
What, exactly, are those reasons? And how did the couple eventually overcome them? We asked Harris to take us through the tumultuous ups and downs of their relationship. Read on to learn the details, which may make you rethink the way you feel about the British monarchy.
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How did Charles and Camilla meet?
Charles and Camilla had their first fateful meeting in 1970 at a polo match at Windsor Great Park, according to the BBC. Some reports even add that Camilla’s first line to Charles was: “My great-grandmother was the mistress of your great-great-grandfather.” Cheeky! Something about that rather prescient come-on must have turned Charles’s head because the pair began to spend more time together.
According to Sally Bedell Smith in her book Prince Charles: The Passions and Paradoxes of an Improbable Life, Charles was absolutely smitten with Camilla (whose name, at that point, was Camilla Shand). He wouldn’t meet Diana until 1977, when she was just 16 years old and he was 29, though they didn’t start dating until she was 19. Charles later said that this age difference really bothered him, adding that Diana felt like a child while Camilla was his equal—someone who treated him like a person, not a prince.
Why couldn’t Charles marry Camilla originally?
Some of the reasons can be difficult for us to understand today, but things worked differently in the 1970s—and certainly with royalty. Here’s what complicated the potential match, according to Harris:
Charles wasn’t ready for marriage and kids
In 1970, Charles was just 22 years old, and Camilla was 24. As was normal for that era, “Camilla was already considering marriage and children at that time, but Charles commented that he thought 30 was a good age to be married,” Harris says. “When Charles met Camilla, he was not interested in getting married—to her or anyone else.”
Charles also had royal duties to fulfill before he could marry. As Harris points out, Charles was about to leave for months of overseas military service. He ended up serving in the Royal Air Force and the Royal Navy from 1971 to 1976. This duty created the perfect breakup excuse for him.
Camilla was not titled aristocracy
Prince Charles’s love life wasn’t private—in fact, it was considered a matter of public concern. Everyone, especially his family, had opinions on who he should marry, and love was not part of the equation. There were rules and expectations about what station and standing a woman had to be to be considered potential queen material. “While Camilla was a member of the upper class, she was not part of the titled aristocracy,” Harris says. And that was a big problem.
Camilla had a “past”
Back in the day, “experienced” women were a no-go for royal brides (yikes), and Camilla had previous relationships. One of those past flings? Her future husband Andrew Parker Bowles. She actually met Charles during a breakup period. Penny Junor’s book The Duchess: Camilla Parker Bowles and the Love Affair That Rocked the Crown spills the tea: Charles’s great-uncle, Lord Mountbatten, reportedly told him, “Lovely for you two to have a fling, but this absolutely cannot end in marriage.”
Diana was the perfect princess
Charles didn’t choose Diana as his bride—it was more like she was selected for him, as the perfect royal wife, strategically fitting the monarchy’s expectations for British royal family marriages at the time. Young, beautiful, aristocratic and, most important, untainted by past relationships, Diana checked every box for what the royal family deemed a “suitable” future queen, Harris says. She was, in essence, a carefully curated answer to the age-old problem of royal matchmaking. This was a stark contrast to Camilla, who was seen as too experienced and too independent.
It wasn’t just the royals, though. Society at the time was equally invested in the idea of a fairy-tale princess, and Diana quickly became the “People’s Princess,” adored for her warmth and relatability. “In the 21st century, the definition of the ideal royal spouse expanded to included people from a variety of social backgrounds (Catherine Middleton was from a middle-class background) and people who had past relationships (Meghan Markle was a divorcée),” Harris says. “But in the 1970s and 1980s, a titled aristocrat without past relationships such as Lady Diana Spencer was considered the ideal royal bride.”
How did Andrew Parker Bowles come between Camilla and Charles?
Back to the future husband. As mentioned, before her relationship with Prince Charles, Camilla had an intermittent relationship with Andrew Parker Bowles—a military officer who was a major in the Blues and Royals Regiment. While Charles was overseas, Camilla rekindled things with her ex.
Then things got royally dramatic—allegedly, Camilla’s father, Bruce Shand, placed a fake engagement announcement in The Times. The goal? To pressure Andrew Parker Bowles into actually proposing. Apparently there was some urgency, since he’d heard the rumors about Charles being a womanizer and wasn’t keen on his daughter getting her heart broken.
The devious plan worked. Camilla and Andrew got officially engaged, and they wed in 1973. By the time Charles got back from the military, the love of his life was off the market.
So there you have it. A well-placed newspaper ad (and some serious interference) kept Charles and Camilla apart—at least for a while. Meanwhile, Charles tried to find a “suitable” bride, beginning to officially date 19-year-old Diana Spencer in 1980. Charles and Diana married in 1981.
When did Camilla and Charles get together again?
Officially? “Charles told his biographer Jonathan Dimbleby that he resumed his relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles once his marriage to Lady Diana Spencer had ‘irretrievably broken down,’” Harris says. The Dimbleby biography places the resumption of Charles and Camilla’s relationship in 1986.
Unofficially, many gossip sources have suggested that the two never really stopped seeing each other. “Publicly, Charles and Camilla remained friends after Camilla’s marriage,” Harris says. “Charles was the godfather of Camilla and Andrew Parker Bowles’s son, Tom Parker Bowles.” Harris adds that Charles and Camilla were known to meet each other at the homes of mutual friends.
If there was any doubt about the true nature of their relationship, it was dispelled during the infamous “Camilla-gate” royal scandal in 1993, which publicized a phone call in which Charles, um, expressed a desire to be reincarnated as Camilla’s tampon. (If you don’t know about this, do yourself a favor and don’t Google it.)
In the meantime, Diana was coming into her own and no longer wanted to play the role of dutiful wife. By 1995, both the Parker Bowles and the Wales marriages had crumbled, and Diana famously told the world, “There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded.” Diana and Charles divorced in 1996, and Camilla and Andrew Parker Bowles had already split the year before.
Why were Charles and Camilla finally allowed to get married?
Camilla and Charles finally got their long-awaited happy ending when they married in 2005. Queen Elizabeth II, Charles’s mother, famously skipped the wedding itself but made an appearance at the reception—possibly the most epic royal side-eye in history. But the wedding still went on, and Camilla was given the title “Her Royal Highness The Duchess of Cornwall.”
According to Harris, it was now possible because “social attitudes regarding divorce and remarriage in the royal family evolved over time, making it less taboo.” But while the Church of England allowed the remarriage of divorced persons, Charles and Camilla still chose to be married in a civil ceremony.
Another factor, according to Harris, was the 2002 death of Queen Elizabeth, the queen mother and Charles’s grandmother, who had famously opposed Charles’s marriage to Camilla. The surviving royals did not have quite as strong feelings about the nuptials. The timing also may have been affected by Camilla’s father becoming seriously ill in 2005. He expressed a wish to see Camilla remarried during his lifetime, and that wish was granted—he passed away in 2006.
Happily ever after: King Charles and Queen Camilla
Now that Charles is king, Camilla is finally queen. And after all the twists, turns and royal rule breaking, the couple that wasn’t “meant to be” is still going strong. The moral of the story? Sometimes love really does win. It just takes a few decades, a fake engagement announcement and a whole lot of royal drama.
Additional reporting by Charlotte Hilton Andersen.
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Reader’s Digest has published hundreds of stories on the British royal family, providing a behind-the-scenes look at the fascinating facets of the monarchy. We regularly cover topics including the latest royal news, the history and meaning behind time-honored traditions, and the everyday quirks of everyone’s favorite family members, from Queen Elizabeth’s daily snack to Prince William’s confessions about his home life. We’re committed to producing high-quality content by writers with expertise and experience in their field in consultation with relevant, qualified experts. We rely on reputable primary sources, including government and professional organizations and academic institutions as well as our writers’ personal experiences where appropriate. For this piece on why Charles didn’t marry Camilla in the first place, Lauren Cahn tapped her experience as a longtime journalist who often covers knowledge, history and the British royal family for Reader’s Digest. We verify all facts and data, back them with credible sourcing and revisit them over time to ensure they remain accurate and up to date. Read more about our team, our contributors and our editorial policies.
Sources:
- Carolyn Harris, PhD, professor of history at the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies; email interview, March 13, 2025
- Prince Charles: The Passions and Paradoxes of an Improbable Life by Sally Bedell Smith
- The Duchess: Camilla Parker Bowles and the Love Affair That Rocked the Crown by Penny Junor
