As ‘charming’ Camilla turns 75, the future Queen Consort’s long probation is finally over
As the Duchess of Cornwall hobnobbed her way through steel drummers, masked dancers and men on stilts this week for an event celebrating the Notting Hill Carnival, she made quite the impression.
Barbara Shervington, one of the pioneers of the annual street party, stopped the Prince of Wales especially to tell him Camilla was “charming”.
“I’m glad you found out,” replied the Prince, simply.
In one way, it was a fleeting compliment which barely registered in coverage of the event. For Charles, that others could finally see his wife as he does will have meant more than he was able to express.
As Camilla turns 75 on Sunday, her position in the public eye is unrecognisable from that she endured as the new Duchess of Cornwall marrying into the Royal family some 17 years ago.
Even at her last milestone birthday, her 70th, she was facing a very different and less certain future, having won over some of her toughest critics but with the question of “will she be Queen?” hanging in the air.
This year, thanks to a very deliberate statement from Her Majesty, her position could not be any clearer: supportive wife, no-nonsense grandmother, and a confirmed future Queen Consort who has survived a longer royal probation period than anyone in modern history.
This weekend, she will celebrate with what is described as a “small family dinner”, with her husband, two children and grandchildren toasting her next stage.
And while there will be cake and conversation, there will not - on her express wish - be smartphones.
“Families don’t sit down any longer, do they, and have dinner,” she told the Daily Mail in an interview for her birthday. “Because I am ancient, in the old days we all sat down [to eat].
“Now everyone is on their devices. It makes me quite cross!”
She has, however, tried Tiktok with the help of her grandchildren
“Nobody particularly wants to be 75, but I can't do much about it,” the Duchess has conceded. “I think you've just got to get on with life and make the most of what you’ve got left.”
And that, says friends, is the key to understanding the woman for whom “just getting on with it” has become almost a catchphrase.
“I’d describe her as authentic,” said one. “She knows who she is and that’s what you get when you’re with her.
“She’s terribly funny and doesn’t take anything too seriously. She has a great lightening effect on everyone, whether that’s trying to convince Charles to take a holiday or putting nervous people at their ease on royal engagements.”
For anyone who has followed the royal soap opera for years, the narrative of the Duchess’ about-turn in public affections is not quite new.
She won over the press some time ago, thanks to a combination of a savvy PR effort and a genuine warmth to journalists and photographers that is rare in royal circles.
A glimpse at the guest list for her Oldie Magazine-hosted birthday party this week - virtually every knight and dame on the British arts scene - illustrates her friends in high places.
Her loyal band of friends regularly speak up for her qualities, and a series of carefully chosen documentaries and guest editing roles have allowed viewers and readers to see her in action like never before.
But as far as she has already come - from the woman once so vilified that an apocryphal tale about her being pelted with bread rolls in a supermarket seemed all-too-believable - even seasoned royal-watchers have noticed a shift as she prepares to turn 75.
“She’s visibly more confident recently,” said a source. “She still gets nervous before big events, but she just gets on with it.
“She really believes in the causes she supports. The difference is she now has a platform to say things and have people really listen.”
The Duchess herself, asked on Woman’s Hour about the “great honour” of being confirmed as a future Queen Consort, has admitted that when it comes to getting things done, campaign-wise, “it does help”.
It has meant that, after years of working on topics such as domestic violence with little outside recognition, she is now a voice of authority.
The rise to that privileged platform hasn’t been swift or smooth.
“I suppose it’s been a bit like when you take on a new job and you have a probation period,” says a source. “You’re working really hard, but you always have one eye over your shoulder knowing at any minute it might be taken away.
“The Queen’s proclamation of the Queen Consort title was effectively the end of that probation and puts the Duchess right at the heart of the future of the family.
“She’s passed, and it allows her to relax into the job without worrying about making a mistake and losing support from either the public or the institution.
“It shows the Queen thinks she’s doing the right things.”
Another friend added: “While she’s grown in confidence enormously over the last five years, nothing has really changed - she still has the same sense of humour and common touch, she understands about the need to be relevant and accessible.”
Of her consort role at the Prince’s side, Camilla herself says: “I think it is equally important [for us] to support each other as a team in years ahead.”
With the Queen’s approval on record, the Duchess has seemed more comfortable talking about her parents-in-law in return.
Painting a picture of the Consort she aims to be, she has said she will follow in the footsteps of Prince Philip, “always two steps behind the Queen”.
“I think [from the Duke] I learned that your place is several feet behind the monarch,” she told Woman’s Weekly magazine this week. “You’re there as a back-up.”
She is also following in his footsteps in another way: unafraid to make a risky joke to break the ice.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” she said at her birthday party this week as she opened her speech. “If I’m allowed to call you that.”
In an era consumed with the gender debate, it was enough to get her cancelled by the wrong audience, but she forged on with a twinkle in her eye. “Putting it simply,” a friend says, “she’s fun.”
The public is beginning to see.
Desperately relieved to be out of lockdown, the Duchess has joined in everything from Irish dancing to tea dances, Chinese New Year drumming and the vibrant sounds and sights of the Notting Hill Carnival.
She agreed to be in EastEnders, discussing the merits of swigging rum on camera.
At a reception celebrating “Women of the World”, she poked fun at her not-entirely-flattering portrayal in The Crown by not only inviting the actress who played her “fictional alter ego” to come to Clarence House but including her in her speech.
In real life, in large walkabouts and small engagements, she seems to continually surprise members of the public who find themselves liking her.
“She looks much younger in real life,” said one woman during a visit to Northern Ireland in March. “Much prettier.”
She has an ever-present air of conspiratorial naughtiness as if she might burst into laughter at the wrong time and take her audience down with her.
Such is the average age of the Royal family that it somehow seems unremarkable that, while her peers have been enjoying retirement for a decade, the Duchess is just getting started.
There won’t be any great changes in her public campaigning, aides have indicated.
She will carry on talking about domestic violence, literacy, animals (dogs and increasingly horses, as the Queen’s mobility problems make it harder for her to attend her beloved equestrian events), and a handful of medical charities particularly close to her heart.
She is likely to take on more patronages from the Commonwealth and has promised to keep “banging the drum” wherever she can.
As Paul O’Grady, her friend and Battersea dog rescuing comrade-in-arms has said: “She could have sat there watching daytime telly.”
On turning 75, and her current stage of life, the Duchess has said: “I think you can’t do much more about yourself. You’ve done what you can. I think you just accept that you are who you are.”
The long probation is over. If the Queen has given her seal of approval, Camilla can surely, finally, step into the royal centre stage without a backwards glance.
