Are Charles and Camilla in trouble?

FIVE YEARS ago Prince Charles finally got the girl. On april 9, 2005, he married Camilla Parker Bowles, the woman he was said to have loved for 35 years. Their wedding seemed to prove the fairy- tale adage that, in the end, true love between a prince and his royal bride will always triumph.

Despite their love for each other Camila finds her royal duties with Charles inceasingly exhausting Despite their love for each other, Camila finds her royal duties with Charles inceasingly exhausting

But fast-forward five years and things appear to be going through a bit of a rocky patch. If weekend reports are to be believed, the Duchess of Cornwall has been growing increasingly disgruntled.

Like any couple they have their ups and downs but what is apparently extremely vexatious to her is the paraphernalia and procedure involved in being married to the heir to the throne. 

The couple, who first met 40 years ago, are now said to be virtually living separate lives as she struggles to cope with her royal duties. Camilla has found, just as Diana did before her, that if you marry the Prince of Wales you are no longer your own person. according to reports, Camilla has apparently been struggling for some time to reconcile her love for Charles with the royal duties that are required of his consort. she is  said to hate “the fuss” involved and

to be “horrified by everything that surrounds being Charles’s wife”.

But Daily Express royal corre- spondent richard Palmer is dis- missive of claims that she is in  any way shirking her public responsibilities. “she’s taken to it like a duck to water,” he insists, pointing out that she could have used her recent broken leg as an excuse not to carry out public engagements but did not.

“She completed every duty even then,” he says. “On May 5 at  Bulfold army camp in Wiltshire she inspected her regiment, the 4th Battalion rifles, using a car, a mobility scooter and crutches.

“That is just one example. she carried out 15 to 20 engagements with a broken leg. If she didn’t enjoy them and feel a sense of duty, that would have been an excuse not to attend.”

However, if Camilla imagined that winning the man she has loved since she was 24 meant they would be able to share a contented late middle age together, she was mis- taken. as Prince of Wales, Charles’s life is hectic. More hectic than his second wife, who doesn’t have his stamina, can easily contend with.

 

Camilla is not often to be found these days at High- grove, the marital home in Gloucestershire. she prefers her

country home, raymill House, which she bought in 1995 for £850,000 following her divorce. Increasingly, she has been leaving London on a Friday and driving straight to raymill, near the picturesque town of reybridge in North Wiltshire, ready to greet her grandchildren. It was there that she controversially chose to spend her convalescence following her hysterectomy in March 2007 rather than being waited on by a retinue of royal servants at Highgrove or

Clarence House.

“When Camilla Parker Bowles agreed to marry the Prince of Wales one of the stipulations she made was to insist she kept her own home,” says Ingrid seward, editor- in-chief of Majesty magazine.

“How wise she was. Camilla knew that the restrictions of royal life would be suffocating to a woman of her age and she would need a degree of independence. at the time she was extremely nervous about what she was about to take on, let alone the inherent responsibilities marriage to the heir to the throne would bring.”

Five years later, at the age of 63, she is reaping the rewards of her insistence. “Her strong and binding relationship with Prince Charles allows them to put space between them and when she is off duty she is able to stay in her own home,” says seward. “Nothing pleases Camilla more than to shake off the trappings of royalty and ‘slum’ in

her own way away from the formal and slightly stifling atmosphere of Highgrove,” she adds. so, if she finds life in the royal goldfish bowl frustrating, does Camilla have any regrets about having married Charles? The couple certainly love each other and their relationship is described by friends as “fundamentally successful” but they do have what are described as “fearsome rows” in a marriage that, at times, is full of fireworks.

“She married the man she loves,” says Richard Compton Miller, author of Who’s really Who. “So, although she may not be enamoured of the commitments that come with the role, she is prepared to do what’s required.”

 IT Is quite natural that her primary focus is her children Tom and Laura and five grand- children, all of whom are under three. Tom, 35, has Lola, two, and newborn Freddy. Laura, 32, has twin babies Gus and Louis and two-year-old Eliza. For a time fol- lowing the twins’ birth, Laura and her family moved in with Granny. says seward: “Camilla certainly has her hands full helping her children cope. There is nothing she enjoys more. and she will happily leave Prince Charles to his own devices at Highgrove while she is doing it.”

Last year she even underlined this commitment to family by building a nursery wing on the top floor of the six-bedroom house. “a new attic staircase now leads to an additional bedroom and bathroom which is for the exclusive use of her grandchildren when they come to stay,” says seward.

But although some rumours suggest they are leading virtually sepa- rate lives, it is not true that Charles and Camilla are hardly ever at eachother’s side. Just this weekend they were in Cardiff together to mark National armed Forces Day, where they joined a crowd of 50,000 as part of a countrywide tribute to our heroes fighting the Taliban. “Hers may sound like a charmed life,” says Ingrid seward, “but for Camilla, who hates flying, dislikes heights, gets seasick, feels terrible in the intense heat and does not have her husband’s formidable energy, royal tours in particular are exhausting.”

Prince Charles, who was brought up by parents who don’t believe in illness or any form of weakness whatsoever, finds all this difficult to deal with.

“Camilla is by no means a malingerer or neurotic but Charles doesn’t understand her weaknesses any better than he understood Diana’s,” says a friend.

When she was seasick on holiday in the Caribbean a couple of years ago he made her get out of bed and

go for a brisk walk round the deck, though he did let her fly home early from their tour of the Far East 18 months ago when the heat became unbearable. “she was not born to the role and was already almost 60 when she married into it,” says seward. “she cannot unmake the past but she can and is making a success of the future.

“With a husband who clearly adores her, her bolt hole in the shape of her Georgian home and her five beloved grandchildren, the Duchess of Cornwall’s life has never looked so good.”

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