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It’s been a long road for Queen Camilla, the “other woman” transformed into grand mater familias, who this week stepped up as the public face of Windsor while the other royals are indisposed. The King is undertaking treatment for cancer and is on rest from public duties for the time being; his son and heir Prince William is picking up some duties but is also attending to the Princess of Wales and his family while she recovers from abdominal surgery. Prince Harry, who this week made a splashy visit to see his father, is still deplatformed, or self-exiled, from any role in the royal programme. Prince Andrew is disgraced and trotting horses around Windsor. Princess Anne is already working at full tilt.
While the Windsors are ailing, recuperating, or simply recused from fulfilling any public duties, it has fallen on the redoubtable Camilla, 76, to take on more. The last two weeks have already seen her hosting a literary event at Windsor Castle, visiting a new cancer centre in London and declaring a latent interest in tap-dancing in her “dotage” while on a trip to Cambridge with Johannes Radebe, of Strictly Come Dancing fame.
According to the court circular, Camilla undertook 233 royal engagements in 2023. It puts her among the harder-working royals: last year, her husband took part in 425 royal engagements, a shade behind Princess Anne, the turbo-Windsor who, at 73, racked up 457, or around 12 events per working week. As the King receives and recuperates from his treatment, it will befall Camilla to take on a lot of the day-to-day. She has embraced the challenge like “a bloody brick”, according to a friend.
By odd coincidence we have just passed the 25th anniversary of Operation Ritz: the PR campaign mounted by King Charles’ then private secretary and spin man Mark Bolland to help rehabilitate Camilla’s reputation in the wake of Diana’s death. In 1999, the King’s former mistress was best known for agitating ashtrays and the bands of marriage and galumphing around muddy fields: the staged photo capturing the couple outside the Ritz Hotel having attended her sister’s 50th birthday party was the first opportunity in a long programme to win the public around. In the decades that have followed, Camilla has remained a stoic, smiling presence at Charles’s side. They married, without major incident, in 2005. Now, as she approaches 80, she is finally emerging as an instrumental player in the enfeebled Windsor brand.
If we get the queen who reflects her people, Queen Camilla is a mood: neither chic nor youthful, she embodies a somewhat matronly energy. But what she might lack in glamour she makes up for with vim: she may be a doughty presence in her twin-sets and piecrust collars, but she always wears a grin. Friends and insiders remark frequently on her husky humour and low-key charm; she’s the one everyone wants to sit next to at the table; she’s funny, and shares naughty stories and doesn’t stand on ceremony. Her own husband describes her, quite unsexily, as being “jolly good and down to earth”. And while these are not the glamorous epithets one might typically associate with loved ones, Camilla has emerged as the voice of normalcy and reason in the strange and fractious Windsor house.
Now, she must step out of her husband’s shadow and put herself about. By all accounts, mostly via Tina Brown, Camilla was never set on being queen. She was quite happy being the mistress, living in comparative anonymity. Not for her the big plans to modernise the house of Windsor, à la Meghan, or act as some big disruptive force. And yet, simply by sticking around for long enough, Camilla has assumed an uncommonly powerful role. Is she an emollient for the warring Windsor princes, or does her presence further inflame ancient ills? Accounts may vary greatly, but she’s had the good sense to keep silent and carry on.
If Britain seeks to see itself reflected in the royal family, Queen Camilla makes for a fascinating looking glass. On the one hand, yes, she is a fusty totem of white, horsey yar-hoo-ness, she’s country house and Agas, or Saltburn in a cardigan. Emerald Fennell, that film’s writer and director, even played her in The Crown, imbuing her with a fruity but mumsy poshness that helped perhaps explain why Charles was so enthralled. But despite the blue-blood credentials, Queen Camilla remains quite grounded. She embodies the “frazzled English woman” archetype that has lately become a fashion meme.
Queen Camilla is a solid representative of the times. Her kids (now in their forties) watch Love Island, she loves the chronicles of Elizabeth Jane Howard, she’s working way beyond the age of retirement and she’s finding it quite hard. “Every day, we’re nonstop” she observed on a visit to Brunei in 2017. “It’s more tiring as you get older. I keep trying to tell everybody that I’m not as young as I used to be, and have to slow down.” She loves a glass of claret, and wearing the same hairstyle she’s worn for nearly 60 years. She’s affectionate without being mawkish and empathetic — but not in an Oprah way. She’s real. As an emblem of modern Britain, Queen Camilla is a terrific fit. We are all frazzled English women at this moment: the economy is patchy, we can’t find a dentist, we are neither thriving nor especially dazzling. We are simply getting by.
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