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Even British royals have arguments about how things should be at home, even if said homes are sprawling estates or actual palaces. According to a new book, King Charles III and Queen Camilla have a “constant battle” over the temperature of their home. One likes “freezing” temps while the other prefers a “sauna.” 

King Charles and Queen Camilla ‘banter’ back and forth about the thermostat

They’re king and queen, but also husband and wife, and like many others, Queen Camilla, 76, and King Charles, 75, don’t see eye to eye on everything. 

In his latest book, The Making of a King: King Charles III and the Modern Monarchy, author Robert Hardman shared a closer look at the inner workings of King Charles and Queen Camilla’s relationship. 

“As a couple, they are also tolerant of each other’s pet habits,” the biographer wrote, per a Daily Mail excerpt. “The king likes to keep the windows open with a cold breeze running through the house, while his wife prefers her space ‘like a sauna.’” 

“‘There’s a constant battle about it,’” Annabel Elliot, sister of the queen, who spent Christmas with the royal family, told Hardman. “‘He will have opened it. She [Camilla] will creep in behind and shut it.’” 

“‘So there’s a lot of: ‘Oh, darling, you shut the window.’ ‘Yes, I have because we’re all freezing,’ Elliot added. “So a lot of banter goes on.’” 

King Charles can count on Prince Harry as an ally in the great thermostat debate 

The topic of thermostats and household temps is one King Charles and his youngest son, Prince Harry, can agree on. 

In his January 2023 Spare memoir, Harry shared he and his father are particularly sensitive to the heat. 

He recalled instances when they’d both be uncomfortable eating in the “subtropical” formal dining room at Sandringham, the monarch’s country home. 

So much so they’d wait until the late Queen Elizabeth II wasn’t looking to “jump up, sprint to a window, crack it an inch.” 

However, the “blessed cool air” wasn’t there for long. “The corgis always betrayed us,” Harry wrote of his grandmother’s beloved dogs. 

“The cool air would make them whimper, and Granny would say: ‘Is there a draft?’ And then a footman would promptly shut the window,” he explained.

​Humor is a key element in Charles and Camilla’s relationship 

Whether they’re arguing over the thermostat or reading Harry Potter books to grandchildren, a major throughline in Queen Camilla and King Charles’s relationship is, per the former’s sister, humor. 

“‘They’re like any couple who’ve been together for a long time,’” Elliot said in the book. “‘Lots of jokes and squabbles …They’re the yin and yang.’” 

Multiple reports over the years have cited King Charles’s temper, which Queen Camilla can manage by way of a joke. 

“‘They really are polar opposites, but I think it works brilliantly,’” she continued. “‘And, you know, I go back to the thing of humour [sic]. Basically, she makes him laugh.’” 

“‘She is his rock, and I can’t actually emphasise [sic] that enough,” Elliot said. “She is completely loyal, and she isn’t somebody who has huge highs and lows.”

April 5, 2024, marks 19 years of marriage for King Charles and Queen Camilla. 

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