The Idea That Queen Elizabeth Interfered In Prince Charles’ Early Relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles Is ‘Laughable’ Claims Royal Biographer

Queen Elizabeth II interfered in Prince Charles’ early relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles, according to The Crown. Season 3 of the Netflix drama implied that a secret meeting among senior royals in the early 1970s resulted in Camilla being forced to marry Andrew Parker Bowles, instead of continuing her relationship with Charles. But according to one royal biographer, the idea that the queen interfered is “laughable.”

The early 1970s timeline in ‘The Crown’ was a bit off when it came to the various romances

The Crown Season 3 episode titled “Imbroglio” dramatized the complex origins of Charles (Josh O’Conner) and Camilla’s (Emerald Fennell) relationship in the early 1970s. Viewers saw then-Camilla Shand first meet then-Prince Charles when she had been dating Andrew Parker Bowles (Andrew Buchan) off-and-on for about five years. 

To make things even more complicated, Andrew also dated Charles’ younger sister, Princess Anne (Erin Doherty). However, one detail that wasn’t quite right about the timeline portrayed on the Netflix series is that Camilla and Anne’s relationships with Andrew didn’t overlap.

Royal biographer Sally Bedell Smith told Vanity Fair that Anne and Andrew started dating in the summer of 1970, but only for a brief amount of time. She noted that they enjoyed each other’s company, but could never marry because Andrew was a Catholic.

Smith — the author of 2017’s Prince Charles: The Passions and Paradoxes of an Improbable Life — says that Camilla didn’t meet Charles until the summer of 1972, which was long after Anne and Andrew’s romance ended. They were introduced by mutual friend Lucia Santa Cruz at her London apartment.

The idea that Queen Elizabeth interfered in Charles and Camilla’s relationship is ‘laughable’

Smith says that Charles immediately fell for Camilla, but for her, it was simply a fling with the Prince of Wales. Their relationship wasn’t as serious in the 1970s as The Crown depicted it to be. And, there definitely wasn’t a secret meeting among senior royals about the situation.

The Crown dramatized a meeting between Queen Elizabeth (Olivia Colman), Prince Philip (Tobias Menzies), the queen mother (Marion Bailey), and Princess Anne, where Anne explained that Camilla wass in love with Andrew, not Charles. 

Then, the queen mother requested a meeting with Andrew and Camilla’s parents. Not long after, the couple married — and it didn’t seem like a coincidence. But according to Smith, “interfering like that is something the queen would never do.”

“No one took the romance between Charles and Camilla seriously. They were sort of under the radar. The only one who really knew about it was [Charles’s great-uncle] Lord Mountbatten, and he promoted it. He invited them to Broadlands together. But the idea that the queen and the queen mother would conspire like that is laughable,” Smith said.

Queen Elizabeth didn’t interfere, but someone else did

Smith insists it is “highly unlikely” that Queen Elizabeth knew about Charles and Camilla’s relationship at that time. And she says it was common knowledge among British social circles that Camilla was in love with Andrew Parker Bowles.

She also revealed that Camilla and Andrew were pushed into marriage by their fathers, not the royal family.  Apparently, Bruce Shand and Derek Parker Bowles “were tired of Andrew’s foot-dragging” after seven years. 

So, they published the engagement announcement in The Times on March 15, 1973, and forced Andrew to propose. Smith also noted that a couple of weeks after Camilla and Andrew married in August 1973, the queen mother invited them to Scotland for the weekend.

All five seasons of The Crown are now playing on Netflix.