King Charles and Queen Camilla announced their engagement two decades ago today, on 10 February The love story of King Charles and Queen Camilla is not necessarily the most regular of royal romances. Legend has it the pair met at a Windsor Great Park polo match in though recollections, as they do, vary on this point. Whether or not you believe the royal biographers who claim that the Firm disapproved of the young love match, the lack of seriousness in their relationship reportedly frustrated the future queen, who married Andrew Parker Bowles in The then Prince Charles , of course, had also married someone else.
One Lady Diana Spencer. As these two partnerships grew increasingly fraught throughout the 80s and 90s The War of the Waleses, as it was dubbed at the time , Charles and Camilla continued to see each other behind closed doors. The late Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip reportedly cautioned Charles to make the match work as best he could with his wife, though as Princess Diana famously quipped, there would always be three of them in that marriage.
The news of Charles and Camilla's affair sent shockwaves throughout Britain, and seriously jeopardised the public image of the royal family. Both split from their partners in the early 90s, but it would be a number of years before the pair went public with their romance.
Some weeks later, the tragic death of Princess Diana left the launch of the new couple on ice. But while official royal engagements were still off the cards, the pair made their public debut in , when they were spotted leaving a birthday party at The Ritz.
Matters escalated in , when Charles and Camilla moved into to Clarence House together, and two years later they announced their engagement on 10 February , with a ring that once belonged to the Queen Mother.
