As one source puts it: “She didn’t really complain about how she was treated. Those who know the Duchess best agree that while she was sometimes “hurt” by the negative press, she never really let it get to her. Despite the scrutiny they have faced over the years, Camilla’s family have not put a foot wrong (bar Tom’s admission that he has taken cocaine), and have remained unwaveringly loyal and discreet. The Duchess could not have survived that time without the support of her son Tom, now 46, daughter Laura, 43, sister Annabel Elliot and brother Mark Shand, who died in 2014 after a fall in New York. It was a deeply unpleasant time and I wouldn’t want to put my worst enemy through it.” In an interview to mark her 70th birthday in 2017, Camilla admitted: “It was horrid. The animosity reached fever pitch after Diana died in a car crash in Paris in 1997. While the Prince’s reputation was badly damaged, Camilla bore the brunt of the vilification. How has she managed such a remarkable rehabilitation? It’s certainly helped that Charles, 72, had Camilla’s back throughout their covert courtship and beyond their 2005 wedding. The dark days of being the “third person” in the Prince and Princess of Wales’s marriage are well behind her. Half a century on, having softened her look and uncomplainingly got on with the job, the 74-year-old Duchess has slowly won over the British public and is now the 10th most popular member of the royal family, with a higher approval rating than Harry and Meghan. Regardless of what Camilla may or may not have said, as Brandreth wrote in his 2005 book Portrait of a Love Affair: “The attraction between Charles and Camilla was immediate and mutual, and passionate.” While they did frequently meet on the fringes of polo matches in the early 1970s, as their biographer Gyles Brandreth discovered, they were first introduced by Lucia Santa Cruz, the glamorous daughter of the former Chilean ambassador. Credit:Shutterstockīut it didn’t quite happen like that. Prince Charles and Camilla at a polo match in 1975.
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