Duchess Camilla
Is she chasing Diana’s long shadow?
She’s really trying. But Camilla will never reach the radiance of Charles’ first wife Diana.
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She will be queen one day. But Duchess Camilla is not really looking forward to the task – and there is a good reason for that.
It felt so good. The Queen, 95, has finally acknowledged her tireless work for the crown – and promoted Duchess Camilla, 74, to the future queen. Prince Charles, 73, gently helped with this decision: he had long asked his mother for this honor. Is everything good now?
Duchess Camilla: The memory of Diana is alive
Not really. Because the future title brings with it an anxious question for Camilla: Will people accept me in this role? Because originally another one was planned: Charles’ first wife Diana. Radiantly beautiful and extremely kind to deal with, people still remember her as the “princess of hearts”. She died in 1997 while fleeing paparazzi.
Prince Charles and Duchess Camilla have been married for 17 years – but the people are still strangers to her.
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To this day, many Britons are convinced that Diana would still be alive if her marriage to Charles hadn’t ended. A number of employees in the palace also mourn her loss. “Everyone here knows that the Duchess of Cornwall fears being compared directly to Diana – because she always feels like she’s getting the short end of the stick. Plus, the whole queen thing is boiling things up again,” says the palace official. By “everything” he means Prince Charles’ long extramarital affair with Camilla, which made Diana desperate and driven. The memory of that time is still alive today.
Camilla wants to be queen?
The Duchess has known for a long time that difficult times are coming. In conversations with husband Charles, she tried to convince him that they were both too old for the throne. Wouldn’t he like to pass the scepter directly to his son Prince William, 39? A wish, according to an insider, that fell on deaf ears. “The prince would do anything for his wife. But his purpose, his life’s work, cannot be shaken.” So the day will come when Camilla will have to face her great fear of the larger-than-life Diana. Until then, however, she was granted some rest.