Camilla, Duchess Of Cornwall

The Duchess of Cornwall (Camilla Rosemary Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly Parker Bowles née Shand) (born 17 July , 1947 ) is the second wife of Charles, Prince Of Wales , heir apparent to the thrones of the United Kingdom and the other Commonwealth Realms .

Prior to their marriage she had been his longtime partner. As the consort of the Prince of Wales she is also the Princess Of Wales ; however, she has chosen to be known as Duchess Of Cornwall . This is mainly because the former title was so closely identified in the British public consciousness with her husband's extremely popular and well-regarded first wife, the late Lady Diana Spencer . Camilla is known as '''The Duchess of Rothesay''' in Scotland .

EARLY LIFE

Christened Camilla Rosemary Shand and known since childhood as "Milla", the Duchess spent her early youth in the village of Plumpton , Sussex , where the family home stood opposite the Plumpton Racecourse.

She attended Dumbrells School in Sussex , as well as Queen's Gate School in Kensington ; later she attended Mon Fertile, a Finishing School in Switzerland .

She made her Debut in London in 1965. In her youth she worked for a year at the London decorators, Sibyl Colefax & John Fowler.

The Duchess of Cornwall's parents are Major Bruce Shand , a British Army officer turned Wine merchant, and his wife, the late Hon. Rosalind Cubitt, eldest child of Roland Calvert Cubitt, 3rd Baron Ashcombe . Among the Duchess's forebears is Thomas Cubitt , who made a fortune constructing much of London's West End for the Grosvenor family. An aunt is Elspeth Howe , the former chair of the Broadcasting Standards Commission . She has one brother, Mark, and a sister, Annabel.

In 1973 the then-Camilla Shand married Andrew Parker Bowles , a Roman Catholic . They had two children together, the Tatler food columnist Tom Parker Bowles , who was born in 1974 and is a godson of Prince Charles , and Laura Parker Bowles , born in 1978. The children were both raised as Roman Catholics. Tom attended Eton, while Laura attended the Roman Catholic St. Mary's Convent School, Shaftesbury. Andrew and Camilla were divorced on March 3 , 1995 .

She was a Lloyd's Of London ''Name'', but is said to have lost most of her private fortune (an inheritance of approximately £500,000 that was derived mostly from her Cubitt ancestors) in the Lloyd's of London insurance market.

She is a dedicated horse-rider and enjoys hunting.

FAMILY HISTORY

According to genealogist William Addams Reitwiesner, her ancestry is French, English, Dutch, Scottish, and American. She is descended from several families — Treadway, Barnes, Jones, Goodnow, Allen, Brazier and others — who were living in Massachusetts and Connecticut in the 17th and 18th centuries.

She also has French Canadian ancestors and is also a descendant of pre- Canadian Confederation Premier of the Province of Canada, Sir Allan MacNab who was the persecutor of the Canadian patriots of the 1837 Upper Canada Rebellion, of whom William Lyon Mackenzie was the hero.

The Duchess of Cornwall is a great-granddaughter of royal mistress Alice Keppel (the Hon. Mrs. George Keppel, née Edmonstone, a daughter of Admiral Sir William Edmonstone), who was the last love of the Prince of Wales's great-great-grandfather, Edward VII ; the Duchess was born two months before Mrs Keppel's death. Through George Keppel, she is related to Judith Keppel , the first winner of the top prize on the British television game show, '' Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? '' George Keppel's brother is the great-great-grandfather of Judith Keppel, making them third cousins once removed.

The Duchess of Cornwall is a descendant of another previous royal favourite: Arnold Joost Van Keppel, 1st Earl Of Albemarle , the right-hand man of William III . She is also a descendant of Charles Lennox, 1st Duke of Richmond, the illegitimate son of King Charles II of England by his mistress Louise-Renée De Penancoët De Kérouaille, Duchess Of Portsmouth .

The Duchess is a grand-niece of Violet Trefusis , a socialite who caused an international scandal in the 1920s by eloping with fellow writer Vita Sackville-West ; both women were married at the time.

RELATIONSHIP WITH THE PRINCE OF WALES

and the Duchess Of Cornwall , after their wedding ceremony]]
The relationship between Shand and the Prince of Wales began in 1971, after they met at a polo match before either of them were married. It ended a year later, reportedly after the Prince delayed proposing marriage. Camilla Shand was married in 1973 to Andrew Parker Bowles, an Army officer, friend of the Prince of Wales.

The friendship between the Prince of Wales and the Parker Bowleses continued. The Parker Bowles marriage was reportedly an open one - both had extramarital relationships - and she became mistress to Prince Charles during this time. Eventually Andrew Parker Bowles took a long-term mistress who later became his second wife, Rosemary Parker Bowles.

The Prince's first wife, Diana, Princess Of Wales , publicly blamed the relationship between her husband and Camilla for the break-up of the Wales' marriage; privately, the Princess referred to Camilla, with whom she had originally been on affable terms, as "the Rottweiler ." Diana reported that Camilla had known before she did that the Prince of Wales was going to propose to her. The Prince and Mrs Parker Bowles bought one another presents and used the pet nicknames of "Fred" and "Gladys" to one another. The Prince's supporters maintained that Diana's "paranoid fixation" over his friendship with Camilla broke up the Wales' marriage.

The romance became public knowledge upon the publication of ''Diana: Her True Story'', followed by the Camillagate scandal (when a racy phone conversation between Camilla and Charles was secretly recorded and published) and Diana's television interview about her failing marriage. These revelations made Camilla so unpopular that, on one occasion, supermarket shoppers pelted her with bread rolls (see {Link without Title} ).

Some claim that the couple's affair had been conducted throughout the Prince's engagement, and that they had been intimate on the night before Charles's marriage to Diana. Though the timing of these tangled relationships has been much discussed and dissected, reliable published reports indicate that they renewed their romantic relationship in the early 1980s, much prior to the timeframe Diana got involved with Hewitt outside the marriage. After the Prince of Wales's public admission, in a television interview with Jonathan Dimbleby , that he had committed adultery, the Parker-Bowleses announced their own divorce in 1995. They had been living apart for some time, and Andrew Parker Bowles soon remarried.

Though she maintains a residence in Wiltshire , the Duchess of Cornwall primarily lives at Highgrove House and at Clarence House , the former residence of the late Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother , which is now the Prince of Wales's official London residence. He spent his early childhood in the house, which was the first residence of his newlywed parents, the present Elizabeth II Of The United Kingdom and The Duke Of Edinburgh . British newspapers reported in early 2005, in articles about the finances of the Prince of Wales, that, even though they were not married at the time, the prince paid for her jewels and designer wardrobe (among the designers are Giorgio Armani and Oscar De La Renta ) and the decoration of her two-room Clarence House quarters by designer Robert Kime.

MARRIAGE TO THE PRINCE OF WALES

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