From traveling with their own toilet seat to the grossest dirty talk you'll ever hear,
Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles are a deeply strange pairing – and they're next
in line for the United Kingdom's throne.
King Edward VII, affectionately referred to as "Bertie," is Prince Charles' great-great-grandfather.
Bertie had an array of mistresses throughout his life, including famous theater beauties
Lillie Langtry and Sarah Bernhardt, American heiress-turned-British socialite (and Winston
Churchill's mom) Jennie Churchill, and woman-about-town Alice Keppel.
Keppel also happens to be Camilla Parker Bowles' great-grandmother.
Camilla is said to have admired her great-grandmother, who famously said "a royal mistress should
curtsy first, and then jump into bed."
Even as a child, she was enthralled by tales of her ancestor.
According to the book "Camilla: The King's Mistress" by Caroline Graham, a friend of
Camilla's claimed she was entranced by stories about Alice.
A former classmate was quoted as saying,
"From the moment Camilla arrived at school, she would regale us with stories about Alice.
... Camilla was always saying: 'My great-grandmother was practically royal, you know.
She may not have been Queen, but she had the ear of the King.
That made her jolly powerful.'"
Considering her fascination with her great-grandmother, one can't help but wonder if she always had
her sights set on becoming a royal mistress.
When Camilla and Charles first met, she reportedly said to her future husband,
"My great-grandmother was the mistress of your great-(great)-grandfather.
I feel we have something in common."
It's no secret that sometimes royal family members marry their own relatives.
It's happened throughout history, even within the past century.
For example, Prince Philip, the late husband of Queen Elizabeth II, was also her third
cousin.
Charles and Camilla are related to each other too.
Prince Charles and his wife are 9th cousins, which most wouldn't describe as a close relationship
at all.
But if a certain rumor is true, it's possible they are even more closely related – which
is where things get a little weird.
According to Catharine Arnold's book, "Edward VII: The Prince of Wales and the Women He
Loved," it's possible that Sonia Keppel, Alice Keppel's daughter and Camilla's grandmother,
was Bertie's lovechild.
The book states,
"Born in 1900, Sonia did have a likeness to Bertie, and later wrote [her memoir] 'Edwardian
Daughter,' in which she did nothing to dispel this rumor."
If this is true, then Prince Charles and Camilla would share Edward VII as a great-great-grandfather
and great-grandfather respectively, which means they would be way more closely related
than initially thought.
To be a royal family member is to be a little extra.
Okay, maybe a lot extra.
When you have a huge palace, wealth, and power, who's to stop you from doing things like hiring
a professional chef to make your corgis' gourmet meals, like Queen Elizabeth?
Or taking your whole bedroom set with you when traveling, like Charles and Camilla did?
Charles is not only a notoriously picky eater, often bringing his own food with him when
he travels, but he is also apparently a picky sleeper.
According to Tom Bower's book, "Rebel Prince: The Power, Passion and Defiance of Prince
Charles," Charles and Camilla once visited a friend in Northern England.
For the occasion, they allegedly brought a truck that, quote, "contained nothing less
than Charles and Camilla's complete bedrooms, including the Prince's orthopedic bed, along
with his own linen."
If that's not weird enough, the long list of items the couple brought with them also
included their own toilet seat, toilet paper, and two landscape paintings.
Who can blame them for wanting the comforts of home when they travel, but even when you
have the staff and the means to justify such extravagance, one can't help but wonder: Wouldn't
it just be easier to have people visit them at Clarence House?
After Princess Diana and Prince Charles separated, Camilla Parker Bowles was considered to be
the most hated person in Britain.
Diana, after all, was "the people's princess," and to many, Camilla was seen as the "other
woman" who destroyed their princess's happiness.
In spite of all the backlash, Charles and Camilla had their sights set on marriage.
"Charles did not show huge emotional intelligence, if I'm brutally honest."
In Christopher Anderson's book, "Game of Crowns: Elizabeth, Camilla, Kate, and the Throne,
Lady Elsa Bowker is quoted as saying,
"[Camilla] thought the most she could hope for was to someday be the King's mistress,
but now Diana was out of the way and Camilla wanted more."
The prince's publicity staff worked quickly to devise a plan that would help Camilla win
over a skeptical public, humanizing her in the public eye.
That plan was reportedly called "Operation Mrs. PB," and its goal was to change the British
public's perception of Camilla, gain the queen's approval, and pave the way for an official
marriage and title.
However, that plan was paused after Diana tragically died.
At that point, it seemed, nothing would be able to rehabilitate Camilla but the passage
of time.
2 years after Diana's death, Charles and Camilla finally made a public appearance and resumed
the effort to integrate Camilla into the royal family.
The hopes of "Operation Mrs. PB" came to fruition in 2005, when the couple finally married and
Camilla became the Duchess of Cornwall.
With a history as complicated as theirs, Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles' wedding
was bound to have some unusual wrinkles.
Seeking parental approval of a relationship is never easy for anyone, but the weight is
a little heavier when your mother is the queen and your union is too scandalous to allow
for the queen's blessing.
At the time, an insider told The Telegraph that the reason Queen Elizabeth did not attend
her son's wedding was due to her role as Supreme Governor of the Church of England.
The queen herself reportedly said,
"I do not feel that my position permits it."
"She believes in the sanctity of marriage and is very disappointed when any marriage
goes down the tubes."
The Church of England is apparently not too keen on adulterous affairs that lead to two
divorced individuals marrying each other in a civil ceremony.
That being said, the queen did attend the reception, and has seemed to grow more fond
of Camilla over the years.
There was also something a little strange peppered into their vows.
Even though they opted for a civil ceremony, their union was "blessed" by the Archbishop
of Canterbury.
Accordingly, they read a penitence prayer from "The Book of Common Prayer" that required
them to "acknowledge and bewail" their "manifold sins and wickedness" before the union could
be sanctified.
The story of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles' love affair is something out of a
storybook, rife with meet-cutes and misunderstandings, and eventual happy endings.
Charles met Camilla in 1970, and the two fell in love.
But their relationship was interrupted when Charles ended up joining the Royal Navy, leaving
Camilla behind.
Potentially understanding that she'd never land her prince, Camilla accepted the proposal
of her on-again-off-again boyfriend throughout the '60s, Andrew Parker Bowles, who was a
friend of Charles who had previously attempted to date Charles' sister, Princess Anne.
Camilla and Andrew maintained a close relationship with the prince, though, and the couple even
named Charles the godfather of their son, Thomas Parker Bowles.
Some authors have argued that naming Charles as Tom's godfather was a way for the prince
and Camilla to always be tied together.
In the book "Prince Charles: The Passions and Paradoxes of an Improbable Life," historian
Sally Bedell Smith wrote,
"As a conscientious godfather, Charles also followed the progress of Tom Parker Bowles,
sufficient grounds for calling Camilla from time to time."
As Tom's godfather, Charles conveniently had a legitimate excuse to visit Camilla's home
without subjecting himself to suspicious whispers about his reasons for being there.
In 1993, a transcript of a 1989 tapped phone call between Camilla Parker Bowles and Prince
Charles was publicly released, in an incident that's now remembered as "Camillagate" or
"Tampongate."
The transcript of the call revealed an exchange of some odd words of affection that most likely
will follow the future king and queen consort of England for the rest of their lives.
The odd words are, of course, referring to the tampon part of "Tampongate."
In the phone call, Charles and Camilla were talking longingly about their desires for
each other, and their desires to hook up with each other as often as they could.
At one point, Charles said, "I'll just live inside your trousers or something.
It would be much easier!"
In response, Camilla asked him, "What are you going to turn into, a pair of knickers?"
To which Charles responded, "Or, God forbid, a Tampax."
Camilla then suggested he should actually hope to be reincarnated as her box of tampons
so he, quote, "could just keep going."
"Prince Charles and Camilla were speaking very intimately about what they like to do
together and how much they miss each other."
What seemed to be nothing more than really strange dirty-talk joking became a complete
nightmare for the royal family, as it quickly turned into a tabloid-worthy scandal.
Princess Diana, who was still married to Charles at the time but was aware of Camilla's place
in her husband's life, reportedly called the conversation "sick."
However, she was also allegedly "amused" by the jokes that followed the conversation,
at Charles' expense.
If you time-traveled back to the late '90s and told people that Camilla Parker Bowles
would be queen someday, no one would believe you.
Camilla has transformed from the most hated person in Britain to the future queen consort,
as Queen Elizabeth II announced was her wish in a statement posted to Twitter on February
5, to mark the queen's Platinum Jubilee.
Once upon a time, the queen allegedly called Camilla "that wicked woman."
Nowadays, she intends to bestow upon the duchess the highest title she can.
The decision seemed like a strange one to many, since it goes against the traditional
values of the monarchy, which once had much stricter rules concerning divorces and adultery.
Us Weekly reported that Prince Harry and Prince William were "blindsided" by the queen's wishes,
and the public was divided on whether or not it was the right move — though most were
supportive.
In response to the announcement, Arianne Chernock, a history professor at Boston University,
told The New York Times,
"It could be an opportunity to showcase a more forgiving, more flexible, more modern
idea of what the monarchy represents."
Perhaps the monarchy is slowly creeping into the modern world after all.
What once seemed impossible for Camilla when she was a mistress is now inevitable: She
will be crowned alongside Charles when the time comes for him to take the throne.
Her great-grandmother would certainly be proud.
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