With Princess Anne celebrating her 74th birthday today, there’s no doubt her brother King Charles and sister-in-law Queen Camilla will offer their birthday wishes – but it appears Anne’s warm bond with Camilla was actually once frosty
Ever since he took to the throne, King Charles has been able to count on the loyal support of his little sister Princess Anne.
The Princess Royal has continued to keep up her busy schedule of royal engagements with her brother as monarch – and he will no doubt be sending her all his best wishes today as she turns 74. However, her relationship with is wife, Queen Camilla, is said to have been less smooth sailing over the years.
And tensions between the two women once led to Anne making a brutal prediction about Camilla’s future in the Royal Family, according to a royal expert. Author Angela Levin made the claims in her book, titled ‘Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall: From Outcast to Future Queen Consort that the relationship between the two women took a long time to warm up.
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She wrote: “Like many people who didn’t know Anne well, Camilla found her frosty demeanour difficult and somewhat unnerving to cope with [at first]”.
Levin also claims that “Anne was, for many years, opposed to the idea of Camilla being granted the title of Queen Consort” and even once made the brutal prediction that “Camilla will never be a true queen”.
These days, relations are said to have improved between the two women as “time has proven to be a healer”, with Anne’s opinion of Camilla becoming more positive over the years.
Camilla – who was crowned Queen alongside her husband Charles on 6 May at Westminster Abbey – was previously married to Andrew Parker-Bowles, with whom she shares two children: Tom Parker-Bowles, 48, and Laura Lopes, 45.
Anne is said to have dated Andrew herself back in the 1970s, when she was a young woman. As he is a Roman Catholic, she would have been unable to marry him as a member of the Royal Family – because the monarch is the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, Levin claims it would have been “out of the question”
The author claims that this romantic history added a tricky dimension to Camilla and Anne’s relationship: “Her relationship with Camilla was particularly awkward as they had both been involved with Andrew Parker Bowles”, she wrote.
Anne kept her distance from Camilla when she first entered the royal fold officially, “as much as possible” the biographer claims, adding that “Princess Anne reportedly initially gave Camilla the cold shoulder. It was little consolation that the Princess Royal had also had a frosty relationship with Diana, for whom she had no time before she married Charles, and with Sarah, Duchess of York”.
These days, things are much warmer between Anne and Camilla, Levin claimed, writing that Camilla’s “sense of duty” eventually won Anne over: “Anne has seen for herself how hard Camilla has worked for the monarchy and her sense of duty. Gradually, she became more amenable”.
