The love triangle that brought Charles and Camilla together
Princess Diana famously said there were three people in her marriage to Prince Charles, but did another love triangle bring the now Duke and Duchess of Cornwell together?
Royal biographer Penny Junor, who has just authored a book about Camilla called The Duchess: The Untold Story, revealed this week that Camilla first began an affair with Prince Charles in the early 1070s as an act of revenge against her then-boyfriend Andrew Parker Bowles.
Why? Apparently he was sleeping with Charles’ younger sister, Princess Anne.
Andrew Parker Bowles and Prince Anne were said to be dating in the early 1970s.
“[Camilla] was passionately in love with [Andrew] but he was a cad, he was bonking other people, some of her friends,” Junor said at the Henley Literary Festival this week, according to the Daily Mail.
"So when she was introduced to Charles she thought, 'Andrew is at the moment off with Princess Anne, I'll teach him a lesson.' So she had a fling with Charles."
In her recently published book, Junor added, “There was certainly an element of tit-for-tat in Camilla’s fling with Charles”.
"Indeed her principal motivation was to have some excitement and make Andrew jealous. She knew the affair with Charles would never go anywhere, could never go anywhere."
Despite the history, the four still mix in the same circles today.
According to Junor, Andrew was aware of Camilla's affair with Charles but when Princess Anne started seeing Captain Mark Phillips in 1972, he was faced with the humiliating prospect of losing both his girlfriends.
When Charles was posted thousands of miles away on naval duty, he finally asked Camilla to marry him. And as they say, the rest is history.