No festive cheer for Camilla
THE Duchess of Cornwall wanted to boycott the Royal Family’s Christmas celebrations because she is “not being shown enough respect”, Day & Night can reveal today.
Camilla, 60, is said to be furious at the treatment she receives from many junior royals and members of the Queen’s household who, she believes, look down their noses at her.
“If that’s the way they feel about her, she’d rather be with her own family anyway,” said one family friend yesterday.
There are no suggestions the couple will split but simmering tensions have taken their toll on her marriage to Prince Charles, 59.
Both were set in their ways when they married and at the heart of Camilla’s frustration is the Prince’s inability to challenge the Palace to show her more public support.
The couple have begun to lead increasingly distant lives, with the Duchess spending
time on her own at her Wiltshire bolthole of Raymill House, a mere 17 miles from Charles’s Highgrove estate in Gloucestershire. And one royal insider said last night that it was difficult for Camilla to escape the legacy of her former love rival Diana.
“It’s one thing being the Prince of Wales’s mistress, quite another being married to him. Charles has always been a selfish, self-centred, quirky individual and it all gets a bit much for Camilla at times.
“Highgrove has always been the Prince’s home. He continues with his life in much the way he did as a young man and Camilla has to find a place somewhere in the cracks and the margins. Sometimes she just has to get away from him.
“She’s the one who makes all the sacrifices. Camilla never wakes up with her real family on Christmas Day any more, she doesn’t have a private life any more. Even friends have fallen away because it’s just so difficult to stay close to a member of the Royal Family.”
Camilla became a grandmother in October when her son Tom Parker Bowles and wife Sara had their first baby. Camilla is said to be upset that she will not be seeing little Lola on Christmas Day.
As it is, Charles and Camilla – nicknamed the Glums for their lack of festive cheer – will spend as little time as possible at Sandringham, the Queen’s Norfolk estate.
They will be among the last to arrive on Christmas Eve and plan to depart as early as possible on Boxing Day to spend New Year at Birkhall on Royal Deeside, Charles’s Scottish estate and the former Scottish retreat of the Queen Mother.
Camilla has long been accused of being the laziest royal and has become “incredibly tense”, according to insiders, when she is on official visits with her husband.
What should have been a crowning achievement when Camilla and Charles joined the Queen and Prince Philip at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Conference in Uganda last month was marked by the Duchess’s nerves.
“She’s very natural when she’s on visits on her own. But he makes her a bag of nerves and the people around the Queen and the Duke are even worse,” said one family friend.
On a following joint trip to Turkey, Camilla was even more nervous. “She tries so hard to get it right for him but she was very nervy and jumpy whenever he was around,” said a member of the royal party.
