These days, Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles are stalwarts of the Royal Family,
smiling and waving at weddings and birth announcements.
But once upon a time, their relationship was a scandalous outrage.
Here's a look at the weird history of a marriage that has been anything but storybook.
"My great-grandmother and your great-great grandfather were lovers so - how about it?"
According to Leslie Carroll's book Notorious Royal Marriages, those words were the first
ones Camilla exchanged with Prince Charles when they met at a party in the early 1970s.
Though Camilla and Charles are officially ninth cousins once removed, some believe they
are much more closely related.
Camilla's great-grandmother, Alice Keppel, was the mistress of Charles's great-great
grandfather, King Edward the Seventh.
Rumor has it that they had an illegitimate daughter together - Camilla's grandmother,
Sonia Keppel.
If so, it would make Charles and Camilla half second cousins once removed.
Prince Charles and Camilla's early relationship could perhaps best be described as "right
person, wrong time."
Charles was reportedly smitten with Camilla from the start, but because she had previous
relationships, she wasn't considered marriage material by the Royal Family.
Charles eventually broke things off, and Camilla reunited with her ex-boyfriend, Andrew Parker
Bowles - who happened to also be a close friend of Charles.
Charles, meanwhile, was pressured to find a more suitable wife, and eventually settled
on Diana Spencer, who became Princess Diana of Wales when they wed.
When the marriage of Charles and Diana began to come apart, Charles quickly found himself
back in Camilla's arms.
And he was reportedly encouraged to do it by an unlikely source - his father, Prince
Philip.
"My father-in-law said to my husband, 'Uh, if your marriage doesn't work out you can
always go back to her after five years.'"
Diana, of course, was devastated.
But how did Camilla's first husband, Andrew Parker Bowles, feel?
It's hard to say.
When the couple divorced in 1995, they released a joint statement that read, in part,
"We have always tended to follow rather different interests, but in recent years we have … grown
apart to such an extent that, with the exception of our children … there is little of common
interest between us."
Absent from the statement was any mention of Charles and Camilla's affair, despite it
having long been public knowledge.
We often hear so much about Camilla's royal stepsons, Princes William and Harry, that
we forget that the duchess has two children of her own from her first marriage.
Son Thomas Parker Bowles was born to Camilla and Andrew Parker Bowles in 1974, and daughter
Laura was born four years later in 1978.
They both seem to have a good relationship with Charles, who is also Tom's godfather.
Tom told A Current Affair,
"I've always adored my stepfather, and he's always been a kind and good and lovely man,
and I don't give a crap what anyone in the press says."
Speaking of bad press, though, NBC News reported that the public "largely blamed Camilla" for
the end of Charles and Diana's marriage in the '90s, with the British media dubbing Camilla
the "most hated woman in Britain."
According to PR exec Roddi Vaughan-Thomas, Camilla was viewed as the "person who was
driving the wedge between the fairy tale princess and the Prince of Wales."
And after Diana died in a car accident in 1997, the public perception of Camilla continued
to plummet.
Two decades later, though, public opinion has softened considerably - and so, apparently,
has the Queen.
Nowadays, it's common to see Camilla and the Queen side by side at public events, but that
wasn't always the case, as the Queen actually skipped Camilla's wedding to Charles in 2005.
Why?
Well, Queen Elizabeth the Second isn't just head of the United Kingdom, she's also the
head of the Church of England, and she felt that prevented her from attending a civil
ceremony wedding two divorcees.
According to The Telegraph, the Queen told a friend,
"I am not able to go.
I do not feel that my position [as Supreme Governor of the Church] permits it."
And a senior royal aide concurred, telling the publication,
"The venue was never the issue for the Queen.
The civil nature of the service is the issue.
She did not feel it was appropriate for her to attend."
So how did Camilla win over both the Queen and the country?
In part by showing respect to the late Diana.
Though Diana technically surrendered her title of Princess of Wales when she and Charles
divorced, Princess Di is still revered as a beloved figure around the world.
So even though Camilla officially became the new Princess of Wales when she married Charles,
she has never used the title, instead going with the less flashy - and less controversial
- Duchess of Cornwall.
Now that's behavior befitting someone who may yet become Queen.