The Queen (2009) s01e05 Episode Script
How Do You Solve a Problem Like Camilla
Very soon after I arrived at the Palace, the Princess of Wales gave her famous Panorama interview.
We had very short notice that it was taking place.
I think it was a matter of literally just a couple of hours.
I remember watching it at home with my jaw fairly dropping open partly just at the brilliance of her performance.
Who knows what fate will produce? Who knows what circumstances will provoke? And then, in front of a gripped audience of 200 million people around the world, Diana was asked what everyone wanted to know.
Do you think Mrs Parker Bowles was a factor in the breakdown of your marriage? Well, there were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded.
Diana had hardly turned out to be an idea! daughter-in-law.
Far from it.
But when she died, it looked as if the Queen would have to put up with an even worse option, and if Charles married her, Camilla Parker Bowles could become the next Queen.
But Charles showed no signs of giving up Camilla.
She was non-negotiable.
No secret about their relationship now.
None possible at all.
Shame no-one turned up.
The Queen was having none of it.
Should I meet Mrs Parker Bowles?! It was a clash between a future Queen Camilla and Queen Elizabeth Your Majesty.
Mrs Parker Bowles.
Leaving Charles stuck in the middle.
I'm so sorry.
Time was running out for the 70-year-old Queen.
The battle lines had been drawn and every possible outcome was looking very messy.
Within a year of Diana's death, Charles was practically living with Camilla Parker Bowles.
His sons had accepted her.
They were an established couple.
Now there was only one person left in their way - the Queen.
She would never receive Camilla Parker Bowles, who she'd not received for many, many years before that, so she said, to Charles's 50th birthday party when the Queen was given a message by her private secretary, Robin Janvrin.
And the Prince of Wales Office called, ma'am.
Oh, yes'? About the birthday reception for his 50th.
He is, as we anticipated, disappointed that the guest list cannot accommodate a few more names.
One name.
Quite so, ma'am.
However, they have now issued an invitation to a second birthday party.
I thought I was the only one with two birthdays.
It's at Highgrove, ma'am.
She'll be there, then.
It will be a less formal affair.
I can imagine.
Tell them I have a prior engagement.
The Queen wouldn't even mention her name, but Charles had been close to Camilla Parker Bowles for nearly 30 years.
Prince Charles loved Camilla.
She had been his teenage sweetheart, or maybe after that, a few years after that.
There was a deep relationship there.
Before they met, settling down wasn't really a priority for Charles.
When you're Prince of Wales, you can actually have most women who you think you want.
So he had a lot of amours, let's call them, high into double figures, according to the people who were serving him at the time, all kinds of people - married women, single women - and he thought there was absolutely nothing wrong with it.
But when Charles first set eyes on Camilla in 1970, it would change both of their lives forever.
I think they share the same ideas, they share the same sense of humour, they like the same people.
They both married other people, but that didn't change anything.
Charles's adulterous affair with Camilla soon resumed.
During his relationship with Diana, the Princess of Wales, she never understood him.
They didn't seem to "get" each other.
And all the time, he had his soul mate in Camilla.
Among their friends it was an open secret, until a radio ham offered the British public an insight into the Prince's pillow talk with his mistress.
I want to feel my way all along you, all over you and up and down you and in and out.
Mmm.
You're awfully good at feeling your way along.
Particularly in and out.
Ooh, just what I need at the moment.
Is it? When their late-night telephone love-ins were splashed all over the newspapers, Camilla Parker Bowles was a posh Wiltshire housewife with two children.
Charles was the heir to the throne.
The tapes made him a laughing stock, unfit to become king.
It was a bleak moment for the House of Windsor.
Little wonder the Queen wasn't all that keen on Camilla.
Any mother whose son's marriage has fallen apart because of his affair with an older married woman is more than likely to feel more than a little resentment towards the married woman.
Now Camilla was divorced and Diana had been dead for over a year, Charles was ready for things to move on.
But despite his 50th birthday coming up, the Queen wasn't about to start giving ground.
âThe Queen thanks Mrs Parker Bowles for her kind invitation, âbut with regret, an unavoidable diary conflict.
â Again.
I'm so sorry.
We can't remove the conflict'? Not a hope.
She's made up her mind.
Yeah, with respect, Mark, this is within the family.
Well, I suppose I Not for me, Charles.
You don't have to.
I'll have a go.
Looking back on it, I remember it as a rather sort of clumsy episode, where, you know, there was a was Camilla going, was she not'? And, um maybe again, it's a bit like what happens in any family when there's a relationship that hasn't yet been completely accepted and just the same issues - is she coming to the party, is she not'? If she goes, am I going'? That sort of thing.
The Queen had always found it hard to get on with her eldest son.
The Queen, as Queen, has a formal role which has always dominated her life from a very young woman.
I don't think she found it easy, as it were, to "get" Charles, to understand this complex individual, who had these passions that she didn't share.
Prince Charles set up a home at Highgrove.
It happened to be 17 miles away from his mistress's country home, but that aside, he made a wonderful home there.
A beautiful garden.
Between 1981, when he moved there, and 1995, the Queen went there just twice.
Well, if you want an indication of the distance between them, you couldn't have a better example than that.
To win the fight over his 50th birthday party, Charles would have to go round to his mother's and confront her.
Isn't he beautiful? He's magnificent.
Good hunter, I expect.
But for Mr Blair's hunting ban.
Hmm.
I've tried to warn Prime Ministers not to mistake change for progress.
Absolutely.
Have you ever had a chat with Mandy'? Mandy? Peter Mandelson.
Minister for the Millennium Dome.
Clever chap.
Actually, he's coming to our party at Highgrove.
Is he? I heard you can't make it.
No, I can't.
Some other occasion? Oh, Charles, I don't know! Mummy, I would be so happy if you could be there with us.
Isn't he gorgeous? I've got high hopes for this one.
Yes, I have.
November 1998, and the Queen had emerged victorious from the first spat in the Camilla wars.
But it wasn't over yet.
Charles was about to go much further, with an act of open defiance against his mother, and this time in public.
Who has done most damage to the royal family's reputation? Top, with 32%, is the Prince of Wales.
And were he and Mrs Parker Bowles to marry Marry?! over half the respondents say that he should not become king.
May I? Does the Prince's office see these polls? I would imagine so, ma'am.
The royal family was coming out of its most unpopular period in living memory.
Now the Queen's most important job was to win back the approval of the people.
The monarchy doesn't just have to be there.
It has to be seen to be there, it has to be shown to be doing something worthwhile and it has, at times, to explain itself.
This is the point at which the monarchy is taking polls and doing focus groups and all that kind of thing.
The Queen is clearly going to want to take her time, make sure it's all right and actually work on public opinion.
Allowing Camilla into the family would be a huge risk for the Queen.
The polls clearly showed the people loathed her.
It makes me so If Charles had any hope of getting the Queen to accept Camilla, he would have to transform public opinion.
So his next move was to send his spin-doctor into action.
Well, Mark Bolland was a brilliant media manipulator.
He'd worked for the Press Complaints Commission, was liked by editors across Fleet Street, was seen as somebody that could act as a bridge between the Palace and the press.
And he did so.
He was extremely clever in organising what was called Operation PB, which was Operation Parker Bowles.
Anybody who was asked to lead communications on behalf of the Prince of Wales would have, and should have, taken quite an aggressive approach.
Operation PB would be mounted like a military campaign.
Operation PB.
Now, what are we up against? The Queen.
Steady on, Mark.
Defender of the Faith.
She's against divorce, full stop.
One of the great evils of society or something.
She said it 50 years ago and she still believes it.
And as if that's not bad enough, Her Majesty's hands are also tied, thanks to her mother, and her sister.
50 years a widow because Edward VllI jumped ship to marry a divorcee.
Even as a child of ten, the Queen had seen how fragile the monarchy could be in the face of an embarrassing liaison.
The whole business of the abdication was a real thing in the mind of the family, and they've always felt that the royal family's hold on their position hung by gossamer threads.
They may look very confident when they appear in public, but they've always had this great uncertainty about whether the monarchy could really survive.
We can go up against the three biggest opponents of divorce in Britain.
150 years of anger, bitterness, devout belief.
Or we can get the remaining 60 million people in the country on our side, which I would suggest would be considerably easier.
And for that, we need the press.
The campaign team decided now was the time to bring Camilla out of the shadows, to make her acceptable to the British people with a massive PR launch at the Ritz Hotel in London.
I can remember walking past the Ritz and being absolutely gobsmacked by the ranks of photographers who had already taken up their positions.
So it was clearly going to be a big thing.
Until now, Charles had risked public anger if he was seen with Camilla.
There had been captured glimpses.
When should he be seen with her? What kind of place should it be'? What sort of function'? And down the road, privately, as it were, when would they be allowed to be seen to be affectionate towards each other - hold a hand, have a kiss? That was being calibrated.
Prince Charles is due to arrive any time now to attend a 50th birthday party being given for the sister of his long-time love, Camilla Parker Bowles.
Afterwards, it's expected, though not certain, that Charles and Camilla will be seen together in public for the first time.
The stunt was designed to establish Camilla as Charles's official companion.
Charles was now publicly forcing the issue with the Queen.
As has happened down the centuries, that meant that there were sometimes tensions between his office and the Queen's office, who would have liked everybody to be as integrated and working to one script as possible.
The Ritz Your wretched uncle, he took that Simpson woman there.
Men are men, dear.
The Prince of Wales and Camilla Parker Bowles seen together in public quite clearly, coming down the steps of the Ritz after the 50th birthday party for Camilla's sister.
No secret about their relationship now.
None possible at all.
The photograph the people have waited so long The picture the people have waited so long to see.
Shame no-one turned up.
Madness.
Absolute madness.
It was a high-risk strategy.
If the people accepted Camilla, surely the Queen would follow suit.
Or would she? 77% agree it was a bad idea for them to be seen together.
Oh, Charles.
The pitfalls of having a spin-doctor.
Last year, that figure would have been closer to 90.
More broadly, both the Prince and Mrs Parker Bowles are polling far better.
More people feel they should marry.
More people feel that he'd make a good king.
Are these people aware that he will then be Defender of the Faith? Hard to say, ma'am.
Perhaps.
Dimly.
I receive many letters from people who are only too keenly aware of it.
With great respect, ma'am, the polls are likely to be more representative.
Robin Janvrin took the view that Camilla was going to be part of the future furniture of Charles's life, and there was really no point in going on simply trying to close her off.
So as a kind of subtle arrangement, Charles's Private Secretary invited Robin Janvrin to meet Camilla.
No less than the Queen's own Private Secretary was quietly seeking ways to find a solution.
Is it really so old-fashioned to believe a vow made in church before God is a vow one should keep? To many people, ma'am, it's a vow one should attempt to keep.
To take too stern a view of those who Who fail'? Could be seen as ungenerous, ma'am.
By now, even the Church saw things from Charles's point of view.
They, too, were ready to open negotiations with Camilla.
On the spur of the moment, I wrote her a letter.
It was simply to say, âI'd love to meet you.
" Which we did.
We met in one of my children's home in Dulwich.
And I felt she was a tremendously straightforward, very charming person.
I had to do this because I didn't want to join the voices of condemnation.
And then Charles's camp pushed things yet further.
Tonight, Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles are together on the luxury yacht Alexander, taking their first foreign holiday with family.
It's a trip which is causing some tension because Charles, here boarding a flight to Greece with Prince Harry, did not consult the Queen.
It's said that William himself suggested that Mrs Parker Bowles be invited on the cruise around the Aegean.
But any suggestion that the Queen, or indeed the Queen Mother, might soon meet Camilla has been very firmly ruled out.
The Queen was refusing to deal with the Camilla problem.
But avoiding the issue was storing up difficulties for the monarchy, not to mention her son and heir.
I know there are people, including Prince Charles, who feel in many ways she's behaved as if she was the last monarch, rather than preparing for the future.
So it's been a glorious holding operation, but she's not moved it forward.
It was left to Robin Janvrin to persuade the Queen that something would have to give.
The Prince of Wales is hosting a birthday reception for King Constantine of Greece, ma'am.
Oh.
He's great fun.
For a man voted out by his own people, he does remain remarkably cheerful.
It's his 60th, ma'am.
We're all growing so old.
I'd love to see him.
The reception is at Highgrove.
Oh.
Some other time perhaps.
What's next in the in-tray? The location need not rule out your going, ma'am.
She Will she Forgive me.
Will she not be there? I have checked with St James' Palace and she will be there, Ma'am.
My position is clear, Robin.
The Prince's approval ratings have been at around 60% for several months.
And in response to the question, âDo you think the Queen should âor should not meet Camilla Parker Bowles?" Should I meet Mrs Parker Bowles?! A very brief encounter'? At a private, unofficial event? No.
Public opinion would certainly be in favour of a discreet acknowledgement.
Not to approve.
Just to acknowledge'? I think she finally agreed to acknowledge, to acknowledge Camilla Parker Bowles, because Janvrin was able to convince her that she was never going to have the sort of relationship she ought to have with her son - and the heir to the throne - unless she at least acknowledged Camilla.
For as long as anyone could remember, the Queen had never wanted the name Camilla Parker Bowles uttered in her presence.
Now she had agreed to attend a lunch party at Highgrove, where she would acknowledge her son's mistress for the first time.
I understand Greece is going to hold some sort of cultural Olympiad next year.
Yes indeed.
They might even allow their former king to attend.
Hello.
Would you excuse us a moment'? Charles, we're talking.
It's quite all right.
Please.
Having a good time? Where is she, then? Um, this way.
It's all right, Charles.
I can do this by myself.
Your Majesty.
Mrs Parker Bowles.
The gardens at Highgrove are looking particularly stunning at this time of year.
I gather you had quite a hand in that.
Thank you, ma'am.
Yes.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I must be getting back to the guest of honour.
Your Majesty.
Camilla's royal approval after lunch meeting with Queen.
Good evening.
Buckingham Palace confirmed tonight that the Queen has officially met Camilla Parker Bowles for the first time.
It happened today at a lunch party at Prince Charles's Highgrove home.
The meeting is being seen as highly significant and a sign that the Queen may have finally accepted the couple's relationship.
For Charles's spin doctor, Mark Bolland, this was another breakthrough.
Should the Queen have met Camilla Parker Bowles? 72% say yes.
But if Bolland scented victory, he was wrong.
Now the papers were talking about marriage pushing the Queen much further than she wanted to go.
In the face of a public relations offensive, she would move so far and no further.
The Queen didn't talk about it very much, but the impression I had was that she didn't really expect that there would be a wedding within her own lifetime.
The Queen was waiting to see how that relationship played out between Charles and Camilla.
She'd not thought about the possibility of marriage at that stage, and she did not want to, so to speak, run ahead of the game.
Charles needed his mother's go-ahead to many Camilla.
But if he asked her too soon, she might say no, and if he left it too long, it might be too late.
Formally, he needed her permission.
Had she said, âCharles, I'm sorry, you can't marry Camilla", that would have been a massive rebuff to him and a huge rebuff to her, and simply in sort of public relations terms, it would have sent a bombshell into the public mind.
The Camilla wars were dragging on and it was driving Charles mad.
Neither side seemed able to budge.
Married or not, he wasn't going to give up the woman he loved.
I can't remember exactly when it was during my time at the Palace, but certainly the Prince of Wales used the phrase ânon-negotiableâ.
And it was a very difficult time because he was not going to give up Camilla under any circumstances, nor was he going to surrender - it was never a question - his inheritance of the throne.
And then came a sudden blow.
The Queen's sister passed away.
Princess Margaret died this morning at the age of 71.
She was taken to the King Edward VII Hospital in London in the early hours and died peacefully in her sleep at 6:30 this morning.
Margaret, while alive, had been an obstacle to Charles and Camilla marrying.
Back in the '50s, she had fallen in love with an unsuitable divorced man and been thwarted in following her heart.
The death of Princess Margaret was the ending of an era, because everyone's image of the past was actually her with Group Captain Townsend.
That was, unhappily for her, the story.
I think it's fair to say the Queen probably felt a little bit of, shall we say, residual guilt over the death of her sister and the fact that her sister had this life where she'd been, I suppose, disappointed in love.
The only companion remaining from the Queen's childhood was now her beloved 101-year-old mother.
And the Queen Mother was ailing.
Six weeks after the death of her sister, the Queen was told her mother had only hours to live.
Oh, no.
I am going now into the sleep.
Be it that I in health shall wake.
If death be to me in deathly sleep, be it that in thine own arm's keep, O God of grace, to new life I wake.
O be it in thy dear arm's keep, O God of grace, that I shall awake.
I think it was a very, very lonely place to be in because I believe that they spoke to each other every day.
And suddenly if you have a situation where you don't speak to two people, you know, you're used to speaking to almost every day of your life, it must leave the most enormous gap.
But even in the Queen's grief, the Camilla problem wouldn't go away.
Sir Robin, ma'am.
I've been talking with the Prince of Wales' office, ma'am.
Mrs Parker Bowles has asked to come to the funeral and the Prince would like her to be there.
With the utmost respect, ma'am, I think she should be.
That woman invited to my mother's funeral? The Prince would greatly appreciate her support at this time, ma'am.
My mother spent many months, years, planning her funeral.
She did not reserve a seat for Mrs Parker Bowles.
Your mother was a much-loved, compassionate woman, the Prince, her favourite grandchild.
He loves Mrs Parker Bowles.
She is part of his life.
Invite her.
Very well, ma'am.
Thank you.
The massed pipes and drums of 13 regiments played a Scottish air.
The final military farewell to the Queen Mother had begun.
Foreign royal families were here.
So, too, Camilla Parker Bowles, invited as a friend of the Queen Mother.
But Camilla was not invited to the Queen Mother's funeral as the girlfriend of Prince Charles.
Nor was she to be seen on the Buckingham Palace balcony on Jubilee Day nine weeks later.
And by now, that didn't look right.
The time had come for the nation to acknowledge that Camilla existed, she was a very important person in Prince Charles's life.
People felt that he was a free man, he had a partner of whom he was clearly fond and a relationship that worked and, in a way, the more moral thing was for him to be married than not.
When you see people who are obviously devoted to one another, one's instinct is to say, âCome on, get a move on.
âIt's time to get married.
" The 76-year-old Queen had been born into a very different age.
Allowing Charles to many a mistress would go against her instincts, her religious views and her upbringing.
And yet all around her, Britain had become a very different place.
The Queen has ridden the social tiger of the most dramatic changes that it's almost possible to imagine in peacetime.
In an odd way, what everyone thought was the '60s really happened at the turn of the new century and the years leading up to it.
It wasn't overnight, but it was a process.
And so the era in which the Prince of Wales had to make a major decision about marrying Camilla was one in which people accepted divorce, in which marriages, unhappily, for various reasons, fell apart.
All kinds of relationships are taken completely for granted.
The monarchy must never be behind the times, but it must never be ahead of the times.
It must just be keeping up with the times, almost imperceptibly.
And that's the art of it.
With her mother and sister dead and gone, it was time for the Queen to ask herself, how much longer could she hold out against the winds of change? When you're in a position, as the Queen is, that really in the end you have to answer yourself, because obviously you have advisers, but it's not something that you can sort of measure up by chatting about, and I think that that is an incredibly lonely place to be.
Did she still have the spirit to go on fighting? Charles and his allies had made what had once seemed impossible, inevitable.
My feeling was simply, as an individual, that it was a right thing to push, and I'm delighted to say that that little bit of pressure may have actually helped in some ways.
Certainly some members of Camilla's family seem to think so.
It was only when Charles actually confronted her - a thing he'd been afraid of doing for a very long time - and saying that he intended to marry Camilla, that she accepted that fact, which I think Janvrin had seen coming for a very long time anyway.
So, in a sense, there's a reluctance.
She's being somewhat dragged along behind events, but she really feels for the future of the monarchy.
At least this clears up a very ridiculous situation where the heir to the throne has got a mistress but not a wife.
You know, I mean, at least in constitutional terms, it makes the thing neater.
But just when Charles achieved what he had wanted for 30 years, a fairy-tale ending was destined to tum into farce.
In the early part of 2005, Evening Standard royal correspondent Robert Jobson was travelling through London in a taxi.
His mole in Buckingham Palace was trying to reach him.
I got a phone call on my mobile phone.
My source had been quite clear.
He said three clear things.
It said, HMQ, Her Majesty the Queen, has allowed the POW, the Prince of Wales, to marry his lady.
She's going to tell the Prime Minister, the PM, and that it's going to happen on April 8th at Windsor.
Charles had proposed over New Year in Scotland.
It was the first time in history that the papers had announced a royal engagement ahead of the Palace.
The engagement announcement was known to very few people.
It was very tightly held within the Palace, and the notice that we had for the announcement was really no more than a couple of hours.
And no matter what way the Palace tried to dress this up that it was all in the planning stages, it was clear that they'd been caught on the hop.
And from the moment the story broke, they had a period of about six weeks when everything seemed to go wrong.
Charles had a long time to prepare for his happy day, but his team hadn't done their homework.
The planning was a shambles.
It emerged that, if they'd married, Charles and Camilla, in Windsor Castle, it would have meant that civil ceremonies could take place by anybody in Windsor Castle for a period of three years.
Now, that, of course, was not practical or possible.
So she had to then become Camilla, the first royal town hall bride.
Ma'am, the Prince's office is wondering Yes.
Would you be prepared to attend a ceremony in the local register office'? She would have said, âNo, let them get on with that civil part.
âI'll be here waiting to celebrate the most important thing of all.
â I mean, just imagine if she'd attended the first part and not the second thing.
And then, with less than a week to go, Pope John Paul II died.
It was now one wedding and a funeral both to take place on the same day.
A 24-hour postponement would allow the Prince of Wales to fly to the funeral and then come back and get married.
So the wedding will now take place on Saturday? With the reception at four o'clock, I'm afraid.
Is that a problem? I rather suspect you were hoping to watch the Grand National, ma'am.
The Queen has a passion for horse racing.
It exceeds, I suspect, even her passion for Corgis, and that exceeds most of her passions.
We all have to make our sacrifices, Robin.
Indeed, ma'am.
So, Charles, ready for the off? As ready as one can be.
Fingers crossed, etc, etc.
I do hope it goes smoothly.
Quite.
I've known these paintings most of my life.
Yes.
They are rather wonderful.
Some of them have been here since 1936.
Gifts for King Edward VIII.
It may be time to move one or two of them on show them in a better light.
Ah.
Such different times.
Damaging times.
Despite all the fast-minute hitches, Charles and Camilla were married on Saturday, 9th April, 2005, at Windsor Guildhall, just up from the local Burger King.
The wedding day at Windsor was, quite genuinely, a lovely occasion.
It was very joyful, very happy not untinged with relief.
The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh were in attendance for the blessing at St George's Chapel and then at the wedding reception.
All the complaints about âThis shouldn't happen" just seemed to go away, because they were a picture of happiness, and I think everybody deserves a little bit of happiness.
This was a middle-aged love story and it came true.
I have two important announcements to make.
The first is from Aintree, that the Grand National has been won by Hedgehunter by 14 lengths.
The odds were 7-1.
My second announcement is that, here at Windsor, I am delighted to welcome my son and his bride to the winner's enclosure.
They have overcome Becher's Brook and The Chair and all kinds of other terrible obstacles.
They have come through and I am very proud and wish them well.
My son is home and dry with the woman he loves.
For those who heard it, it was really moving, because all the stuff about âDid she approve? Didn't she approve? How did they all get on?" This was the coming together.
Quotes, closure, close quotes.
Charles and Camilla.
Once, the Queen had not wanted to hear her name.
Now, Camilla, the new Duchess of Cornwall, was her daughter-in-law.
I suppose you could look at the 50 years between 1955, when Princess Margaret did not marry Group Captain Peter Townsend, and 2005, when the Prince of Wales did marry Camilla Parker Bowles.
And that is just about as remarkable a change as you could imagine.
But Camilla was not queen yet and there were still some compromises that the still reigning Queen Elizabeth was not prepared to make.
And in the event of the Prince becoming King, the number who would be happy for his wife to be Queen has actually doubled.
Well done, Robin.
Mission accomplished.
Yes, ma'am.
I've also had a chance to check the order of precedence.
Oh, yes.
At all state occasions, the Duchess of Cornwall is now the second most senior female member of the royal family.
Ahead of Princess Anne? And Princess Alexandra.
I think it's time for a new order of precedence.
Don't you? As you see fit, ma'am.
The Princesses, then the Duchess? To be announced on my birthday, I think.
No need to inform the Prince's office just yet.
We had very short notice that it was taking place.
I think it was a matter of literally just a couple of hours.
I remember watching it at home with my jaw fairly dropping open partly just at the brilliance of her performance.
Who knows what fate will produce? Who knows what circumstances will provoke? And then, in front of a gripped audience of 200 million people around the world, Diana was asked what everyone wanted to know.
Do you think Mrs Parker Bowles was a factor in the breakdown of your marriage? Well, there were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded.
Diana had hardly turned out to be an idea! daughter-in-law.
Far from it.
But when she died, it looked as if the Queen would have to put up with an even worse option, and if Charles married her, Camilla Parker Bowles could become the next Queen.
But Charles showed no signs of giving up Camilla.
She was non-negotiable.
No secret about their relationship now.
None possible at all.
Shame no-one turned up.
The Queen was having none of it.
Should I meet Mrs Parker Bowles?! It was a clash between a future Queen Camilla and Queen Elizabeth Your Majesty.
Mrs Parker Bowles.
Leaving Charles stuck in the middle.
I'm so sorry.
Time was running out for the 70-year-old Queen.
The battle lines had been drawn and every possible outcome was looking very messy.
Within a year of Diana's death, Charles was practically living with Camilla Parker Bowles.
His sons had accepted her.
They were an established couple.
Now there was only one person left in their way - the Queen.
She would never receive Camilla Parker Bowles, who she'd not received for many, many years before that, so she said, to Charles's 50th birthday party when the Queen was given a message by her private secretary, Robin Janvrin.
And the Prince of Wales Office called, ma'am.
Oh, yes'? About the birthday reception for his 50th.
He is, as we anticipated, disappointed that the guest list cannot accommodate a few more names.
One name.
Quite so, ma'am.
However, they have now issued an invitation to a second birthday party.
I thought I was the only one with two birthdays.
It's at Highgrove, ma'am.
She'll be there, then.
It will be a less formal affair.
I can imagine.
Tell them I have a prior engagement.
The Queen wouldn't even mention her name, but Charles had been close to Camilla Parker Bowles for nearly 30 years.
Prince Charles loved Camilla.
She had been his teenage sweetheart, or maybe after that, a few years after that.
There was a deep relationship there.
Before they met, settling down wasn't really a priority for Charles.
When you're Prince of Wales, you can actually have most women who you think you want.
So he had a lot of amours, let's call them, high into double figures, according to the people who were serving him at the time, all kinds of people - married women, single women - and he thought there was absolutely nothing wrong with it.
But when Charles first set eyes on Camilla in 1970, it would change both of their lives forever.
I think they share the same ideas, they share the same sense of humour, they like the same people.
They both married other people, but that didn't change anything.
Charles's adulterous affair with Camilla soon resumed.
During his relationship with Diana, the Princess of Wales, she never understood him.
They didn't seem to "get" each other.
And all the time, he had his soul mate in Camilla.
Among their friends it was an open secret, until a radio ham offered the British public an insight into the Prince's pillow talk with his mistress.
I want to feel my way all along you, all over you and up and down you and in and out.
Mmm.
You're awfully good at feeling your way along.
Particularly in and out.
Ooh, just what I need at the moment.
Is it? When their late-night telephone love-ins were splashed all over the newspapers, Camilla Parker Bowles was a posh Wiltshire housewife with two children.
Charles was the heir to the throne.
The tapes made him a laughing stock, unfit to become king.
It was a bleak moment for the House of Windsor.
Little wonder the Queen wasn't all that keen on Camilla.
Any mother whose son's marriage has fallen apart because of his affair with an older married woman is more than likely to feel more than a little resentment towards the married woman.
Now Camilla was divorced and Diana had been dead for over a year, Charles was ready for things to move on.
But despite his 50th birthday coming up, the Queen wasn't about to start giving ground.
âThe Queen thanks Mrs Parker Bowles for her kind invitation, âbut with regret, an unavoidable diary conflict.
â Again.
I'm so sorry.
We can't remove the conflict'? Not a hope.
She's made up her mind.
Yeah, with respect, Mark, this is within the family.
Well, I suppose I Not for me, Charles.
You don't have to.
I'll have a go.
Looking back on it, I remember it as a rather sort of clumsy episode, where, you know, there was a was Camilla going, was she not'? And, um maybe again, it's a bit like what happens in any family when there's a relationship that hasn't yet been completely accepted and just the same issues - is she coming to the party, is she not'? If she goes, am I going'? That sort of thing.
The Queen had always found it hard to get on with her eldest son.
The Queen, as Queen, has a formal role which has always dominated her life from a very young woman.
I don't think she found it easy, as it were, to "get" Charles, to understand this complex individual, who had these passions that she didn't share.
Prince Charles set up a home at Highgrove.
It happened to be 17 miles away from his mistress's country home, but that aside, he made a wonderful home there.
A beautiful garden.
Between 1981, when he moved there, and 1995, the Queen went there just twice.
Well, if you want an indication of the distance between them, you couldn't have a better example than that.
To win the fight over his 50th birthday party, Charles would have to go round to his mother's and confront her.
Isn't he beautiful? He's magnificent.
Good hunter, I expect.
But for Mr Blair's hunting ban.
Hmm.
I've tried to warn Prime Ministers not to mistake change for progress.
Absolutely.
Have you ever had a chat with Mandy'? Mandy? Peter Mandelson.
Minister for the Millennium Dome.
Clever chap.
Actually, he's coming to our party at Highgrove.
Is he? I heard you can't make it.
No, I can't.
Some other occasion? Oh, Charles, I don't know! Mummy, I would be so happy if you could be there with us.
Isn't he gorgeous? I've got high hopes for this one.
Yes, I have.
November 1998, and the Queen had emerged victorious from the first spat in the Camilla wars.
But it wasn't over yet.
Charles was about to go much further, with an act of open defiance against his mother, and this time in public.
Who has done most damage to the royal family's reputation? Top, with 32%, is the Prince of Wales.
And were he and Mrs Parker Bowles to marry Marry?! over half the respondents say that he should not become king.
May I? Does the Prince's office see these polls? I would imagine so, ma'am.
The royal family was coming out of its most unpopular period in living memory.
Now the Queen's most important job was to win back the approval of the people.
The monarchy doesn't just have to be there.
It has to be seen to be there, it has to be shown to be doing something worthwhile and it has, at times, to explain itself.
This is the point at which the monarchy is taking polls and doing focus groups and all that kind of thing.
The Queen is clearly going to want to take her time, make sure it's all right and actually work on public opinion.
Allowing Camilla into the family would be a huge risk for the Queen.
The polls clearly showed the people loathed her.
It makes me so If Charles had any hope of getting the Queen to accept Camilla, he would have to transform public opinion.
So his next move was to send his spin-doctor into action.
Well, Mark Bolland was a brilliant media manipulator.
He'd worked for the Press Complaints Commission, was liked by editors across Fleet Street, was seen as somebody that could act as a bridge between the Palace and the press.
And he did so.
He was extremely clever in organising what was called Operation PB, which was Operation Parker Bowles.
Anybody who was asked to lead communications on behalf of the Prince of Wales would have, and should have, taken quite an aggressive approach.
Operation PB would be mounted like a military campaign.
Operation PB.
Now, what are we up against? The Queen.
Steady on, Mark.
Defender of the Faith.
She's against divorce, full stop.
One of the great evils of society or something.
She said it 50 years ago and she still believes it.
And as if that's not bad enough, Her Majesty's hands are also tied, thanks to her mother, and her sister.
50 years a widow because Edward VllI jumped ship to marry a divorcee.
Even as a child of ten, the Queen had seen how fragile the monarchy could be in the face of an embarrassing liaison.
The whole business of the abdication was a real thing in the mind of the family, and they've always felt that the royal family's hold on their position hung by gossamer threads.
They may look very confident when they appear in public, but they've always had this great uncertainty about whether the monarchy could really survive.
We can go up against the three biggest opponents of divorce in Britain.
150 years of anger, bitterness, devout belief.
Or we can get the remaining 60 million people in the country on our side, which I would suggest would be considerably easier.
And for that, we need the press.
The campaign team decided now was the time to bring Camilla out of the shadows, to make her acceptable to the British people with a massive PR launch at the Ritz Hotel in London.
I can remember walking past the Ritz and being absolutely gobsmacked by the ranks of photographers who had already taken up their positions.
So it was clearly going to be a big thing.
Until now, Charles had risked public anger if he was seen with Camilla.
There had been captured glimpses.
When should he be seen with her? What kind of place should it be'? What sort of function'? And down the road, privately, as it were, when would they be allowed to be seen to be affectionate towards each other - hold a hand, have a kiss? That was being calibrated.
Prince Charles is due to arrive any time now to attend a 50th birthday party being given for the sister of his long-time love, Camilla Parker Bowles.
Afterwards, it's expected, though not certain, that Charles and Camilla will be seen together in public for the first time.
The stunt was designed to establish Camilla as Charles's official companion.
Charles was now publicly forcing the issue with the Queen.
As has happened down the centuries, that meant that there were sometimes tensions between his office and the Queen's office, who would have liked everybody to be as integrated and working to one script as possible.
The Ritz Your wretched uncle, he took that Simpson woman there.
Men are men, dear.
The Prince of Wales and Camilla Parker Bowles seen together in public quite clearly, coming down the steps of the Ritz after the 50th birthday party for Camilla's sister.
No secret about their relationship now.
None possible at all.
The photograph the people have waited so long The picture the people have waited so long to see.
Shame no-one turned up.
Madness.
Absolute madness.
It was a high-risk strategy.
If the people accepted Camilla, surely the Queen would follow suit.
Or would she? 77% agree it was a bad idea for them to be seen together.
Oh, Charles.
The pitfalls of having a spin-doctor.
Last year, that figure would have been closer to 90.
More broadly, both the Prince and Mrs Parker Bowles are polling far better.
More people feel they should marry.
More people feel that he'd make a good king.
Are these people aware that he will then be Defender of the Faith? Hard to say, ma'am.
Perhaps.
Dimly.
I receive many letters from people who are only too keenly aware of it.
With great respect, ma'am, the polls are likely to be more representative.
Robin Janvrin took the view that Camilla was going to be part of the future furniture of Charles's life, and there was really no point in going on simply trying to close her off.
So as a kind of subtle arrangement, Charles's Private Secretary invited Robin Janvrin to meet Camilla.
No less than the Queen's own Private Secretary was quietly seeking ways to find a solution.
Is it really so old-fashioned to believe a vow made in church before God is a vow one should keep? To many people, ma'am, it's a vow one should attempt to keep.
To take too stern a view of those who Who fail'? Could be seen as ungenerous, ma'am.
By now, even the Church saw things from Charles's point of view.
They, too, were ready to open negotiations with Camilla.
On the spur of the moment, I wrote her a letter.
It was simply to say, âI'd love to meet you.
" Which we did.
We met in one of my children's home in Dulwich.
And I felt she was a tremendously straightforward, very charming person.
I had to do this because I didn't want to join the voices of condemnation.
And then Charles's camp pushed things yet further.
Tonight, Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles are together on the luxury yacht Alexander, taking their first foreign holiday with family.
It's a trip which is causing some tension because Charles, here boarding a flight to Greece with Prince Harry, did not consult the Queen.
It's said that William himself suggested that Mrs Parker Bowles be invited on the cruise around the Aegean.
But any suggestion that the Queen, or indeed the Queen Mother, might soon meet Camilla has been very firmly ruled out.
The Queen was refusing to deal with the Camilla problem.
But avoiding the issue was storing up difficulties for the monarchy, not to mention her son and heir.
I know there are people, including Prince Charles, who feel in many ways she's behaved as if she was the last monarch, rather than preparing for the future.
So it's been a glorious holding operation, but she's not moved it forward.
It was left to Robin Janvrin to persuade the Queen that something would have to give.
The Prince of Wales is hosting a birthday reception for King Constantine of Greece, ma'am.
Oh.
He's great fun.
For a man voted out by his own people, he does remain remarkably cheerful.
It's his 60th, ma'am.
We're all growing so old.
I'd love to see him.
The reception is at Highgrove.
Oh.
Some other time perhaps.
What's next in the in-tray? The location need not rule out your going, ma'am.
She Will she Forgive me.
Will she not be there? I have checked with St James' Palace and she will be there, Ma'am.
My position is clear, Robin.
The Prince's approval ratings have been at around 60% for several months.
And in response to the question, âDo you think the Queen should âor should not meet Camilla Parker Bowles?" Should I meet Mrs Parker Bowles?! A very brief encounter'? At a private, unofficial event? No.
Public opinion would certainly be in favour of a discreet acknowledgement.
Not to approve.
Just to acknowledge'? I think she finally agreed to acknowledge, to acknowledge Camilla Parker Bowles, because Janvrin was able to convince her that she was never going to have the sort of relationship she ought to have with her son - and the heir to the throne - unless she at least acknowledged Camilla.
For as long as anyone could remember, the Queen had never wanted the name Camilla Parker Bowles uttered in her presence.
Now she had agreed to attend a lunch party at Highgrove, where she would acknowledge her son's mistress for the first time.
I understand Greece is going to hold some sort of cultural Olympiad next year.
Yes indeed.
They might even allow their former king to attend.
Hello.
Would you excuse us a moment'? Charles, we're talking.
It's quite all right.
Please.
Having a good time? Where is she, then? Um, this way.
It's all right, Charles.
I can do this by myself.
Your Majesty.
Mrs Parker Bowles.
The gardens at Highgrove are looking particularly stunning at this time of year.
I gather you had quite a hand in that.
Thank you, ma'am.
Yes.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I must be getting back to the guest of honour.
Your Majesty.
Camilla's royal approval after lunch meeting with Queen.
Good evening.
Buckingham Palace confirmed tonight that the Queen has officially met Camilla Parker Bowles for the first time.
It happened today at a lunch party at Prince Charles's Highgrove home.
The meeting is being seen as highly significant and a sign that the Queen may have finally accepted the couple's relationship.
For Charles's spin doctor, Mark Bolland, this was another breakthrough.
Should the Queen have met Camilla Parker Bowles? 72% say yes.
But if Bolland scented victory, he was wrong.
Now the papers were talking about marriage pushing the Queen much further than she wanted to go.
In the face of a public relations offensive, she would move so far and no further.
The Queen didn't talk about it very much, but the impression I had was that she didn't really expect that there would be a wedding within her own lifetime.
The Queen was waiting to see how that relationship played out between Charles and Camilla.
She'd not thought about the possibility of marriage at that stage, and she did not want to, so to speak, run ahead of the game.
Charles needed his mother's go-ahead to many Camilla.
But if he asked her too soon, she might say no, and if he left it too long, it might be too late.
Formally, he needed her permission.
Had she said, âCharles, I'm sorry, you can't marry Camilla", that would have been a massive rebuff to him and a huge rebuff to her, and simply in sort of public relations terms, it would have sent a bombshell into the public mind.
The Camilla wars were dragging on and it was driving Charles mad.
Neither side seemed able to budge.
Married or not, he wasn't going to give up the woman he loved.
I can't remember exactly when it was during my time at the Palace, but certainly the Prince of Wales used the phrase ânon-negotiableâ.
And it was a very difficult time because he was not going to give up Camilla under any circumstances, nor was he going to surrender - it was never a question - his inheritance of the throne.
And then came a sudden blow.
The Queen's sister passed away.
Princess Margaret died this morning at the age of 71.
She was taken to the King Edward VII Hospital in London in the early hours and died peacefully in her sleep at 6:30 this morning.
Margaret, while alive, had been an obstacle to Charles and Camilla marrying.
Back in the '50s, she had fallen in love with an unsuitable divorced man and been thwarted in following her heart.
The death of Princess Margaret was the ending of an era, because everyone's image of the past was actually her with Group Captain Townsend.
That was, unhappily for her, the story.
I think it's fair to say the Queen probably felt a little bit of, shall we say, residual guilt over the death of her sister and the fact that her sister had this life where she'd been, I suppose, disappointed in love.
The only companion remaining from the Queen's childhood was now her beloved 101-year-old mother.
And the Queen Mother was ailing.
Six weeks after the death of her sister, the Queen was told her mother had only hours to live.
Oh, no.
I am going now into the sleep.
Be it that I in health shall wake.
If death be to me in deathly sleep, be it that in thine own arm's keep, O God of grace, to new life I wake.
O be it in thy dear arm's keep, O God of grace, that I shall awake.
I think it was a very, very lonely place to be in because I believe that they spoke to each other every day.
And suddenly if you have a situation where you don't speak to two people, you know, you're used to speaking to almost every day of your life, it must leave the most enormous gap.
But even in the Queen's grief, the Camilla problem wouldn't go away.
Sir Robin, ma'am.
I've been talking with the Prince of Wales' office, ma'am.
Mrs Parker Bowles has asked to come to the funeral and the Prince would like her to be there.
With the utmost respect, ma'am, I think she should be.
That woman invited to my mother's funeral? The Prince would greatly appreciate her support at this time, ma'am.
My mother spent many months, years, planning her funeral.
She did not reserve a seat for Mrs Parker Bowles.
Your mother was a much-loved, compassionate woman, the Prince, her favourite grandchild.
He loves Mrs Parker Bowles.
She is part of his life.
Invite her.
Very well, ma'am.
Thank you.
The massed pipes and drums of 13 regiments played a Scottish air.
The final military farewell to the Queen Mother had begun.
Foreign royal families were here.
So, too, Camilla Parker Bowles, invited as a friend of the Queen Mother.
But Camilla was not invited to the Queen Mother's funeral as the girlfriend of Prince Charles.
Nor was she to be seen on the Buckingham Palace balcony on Jubilee Day nine weeks later.
And by now, that didn't look right.
The time had come for the nation to acknowledge that Camilla existed, she was a very important person in Prince Charles's life.
People felt that he was a free man, he had a partner of whom he was clearly fond and a relationship that worked and, in a way, the more moral thing was for him to be married than not.
When you see people who are obviously devoted to one another, one's instinct is to say, âCome on, get a move on.
âIt's time to get married.
" The 76-year-old Queen had been born into a very different age.
Allowing Charles to many a mistress would go against her instincts, her religious views and her upbringing.
And yet all around her, Britain had become a very different place.
The Queen has ridden the social tiger of the most dramatic changes that it's almost possible to imagine in peacetime.
In an odd way, what everyone thought was the '60s really happened at the turn of the new century and the years leading up to it.
It wasn't overnight, but it was a process.
And so the era in which the Prince of Wales had to make a major decision about marrying Camilla was one in which people accepted divorce, in which marriages, unhappily, for various reasons, fell apart.
All kinds of relationships are taken completely for granted.
The monarchy must never be behind the times, but it must never be ahead of the times.
It must just be keeping up with the times, almost imperceptibly.
And that's the art of it.
With her mother and sister dead and gone, it was time for the Queen to ask herself, how much longer could she hold out against the winds of change? When you're in a position, as the Queen is, that really in the end you have to answer yourself, because obviously you have advisers, but it's not something that you can sort of measure up by chatting about, and I think that that is an incredibly lonely place to be.
Did she still have the spirit to go on fighting? Charles and his allies had made what had once seemed impossible, inevitable.
My feeling was simply, as an individual, that it was a right thing to push, and I'm delighted to say that that little bit of pressure may have actually helped in some ways.
Certainly some members of Camilla's family seem to think so.
It was only when Charles actually confronted her - a thing he'd been afraid of doing for a very long time - and saying that he intended to marry Camilla, that she accepted that fact, which I think Janvrin had seen coming for a very long time anyway.
So, in a sense, there's a reluctance.
She's being somewhat dragged along behind events, but she really feels for the future of the monarchy.
At least this clears up a very ridiculous situation where the heir to the throne has got a mistress but not a wife.
You know, I mean, at least in constitutional terms, it makes the thing neater.
But just when Charles achieved what he had wanted for 30 years, a fairy-tale ending was destined to tum into farce.
In the early part of 2005, Evening Standard royal correspondent Robert Jobson was travelling through London in a taxi.
His mole in Buckingham Palace was trying to reach him.
I got a phone call on my mobile phone.
My source had been quite clear.
He said three clear things.
It said, HMQ, Her Majesty the Queen, has allowed the POW, the Prince of Wales, to marry his lady.
She's going to tell the Prime Minister, the PM, and that it's going to happen on April 8th at Windsor.
Charles had proposed over New Year in Scotland.
It was the first time in history that the papers had announced a royal engagement ahead of the Palace.
The engagement announcement was known to very few people.
It was very tightly held within the Palace, and the notice that we had for the announcement was really no more than a couple of hours.
And no matter what way the Palace tried to dress this up that it was all in the planning stages, it was clear that they'd been caught on the hop.
And from the moment the story broke, they had a period of about six weeks when everything seemed to go wrong.
Charles had a long time to prepare for his happy day, but his team hadn't done their homework.
The planning was a shambles.
It emerged that, if they'd married, Charles and Camilla, in Windsor Castle, it would have meant that civil ceremonies could take place by anybody in Windsor Castle for a period of three years.
Now, that, of course, was not practical or possible.
So she had to then become Camilla, the first royal town hall bride.
Ma'am, the Prince's office is wondering Yes.
Would you be prepared to attend a ceremony in the local register office'? She would have said, âNo, let them get on with that civil part.
âI'll be here waiting to celebrate the most important thing of all.
â I mean, just imagine if she'd attended the first part and not the second thing.
And then, with less than a week to go, Pope John Paul II died.
It was now one wedding and a funeral both to take place on the same day.
A 24-hour postponement would allow the Prince of Wales to fly to the funeral and then come back and get married.
So the wedding will now take place on Saturday? With the reception at four o'clock, I'm afraid.
Is that a problem? I rather suspect you were hoping to watch the Grand National, ma'am.
The Queen has a passion for horse racing.
It exceeds, I suspect, even her passion for Corgis, and that exceeds most of her passions.
We all have to make our sacrifices, Robin.
Indeed, ma'am.
So, Charles, ready for the off? As ready as one can be.
Fingers crossed, etc, etc.
I do hope it goes smoothly.
Quite.
I've known these paintings most of my life.
Yes.
They are rather wonderful.
Some of them have been here since 1936.
Gifts for King Edward VIII.
It may be time to move one or two of them on show them in a better light.
Ah.
Such different times.
Damaging times.
Despite all the fast-minute hitches, Charles and Camilla were married on Saturday, 9th April, 2005, at Windsor Guildhall, just up from the local Burger King.
The wedding day at Windsor was, quite genuinely, a lovely occasion.
It was very joyful, very happy not untinged with relief.
The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh were in attendance for the blessing at St George's Chapel and then at the wedding reception.
All the complaints about âThis shouldn't happen" just seemed to go away, because they were a picture of happiness, and I think everybody deserves a little bit of happiness.
This was a middle-aged love story and it came true.
I have two important announcements to make.
The first is from Aintree, that the Grand National has been won by Hedgehunter by 14 lengths.
The odds were 7-1.
My second announcement is that, here at Windsor, I am delighted to welcome my son and his bride to the winner's enclosure.
They have overcome Becher's Brook and The Chair and all kinds of other terrible obstacles.
They have come through and I am very proud and wish them well.
My son is home and dry with the woman he loves.
For those who heard it, it was really moving, because all the stuff about âDid she approve? Didn't she approve? How did they all get on?" This was the coming together.
Quotes, closure, close quotes.
Charles and Camilla.
Once, the Queen had not wanted to hear her name.
Now, Camilla, the new Duchess of Cornwall, was her daughter-in-law.
I suppose you could look at the 50 years between 1955, when Princess Margaret did not marry Group Captain Peter Townsend, and 2005, when the Prince of Wales did marry Camilla Parker Bowles.
And that is just about as remarkable a change as you could imagine.
But Camilla was not queen yet and there were still some compromises that the still reigning Queen Elizabeth was not prepared to make.
And in the event of the Prince becoming King, the number who would be happy for his wife to be Queen has actually doubled.
Well done, Robin.
Mission accomplished.
Yes, ma'am.
I've also had a chance to check the order of precedence.
Oh, yes.
At all state occasions, the Duchess of Cornwall is now the second most senior female member of the royal family.
Ahead of Princess Anne? And Princess Alexandra.
I think it's time for a new order of precedence.
Don't you? As you see fit, ma'am.
The Princesses, then the Duchess? To be announced on my birthday, I think.
No need to inform the Prince's office just yet.