Princess Diana Wasn’t the Only Woman Who King Charles Cheated on With Camilla Parker Bowles
King Charles III and Queen Camilla (formerly Camilla Parker Bowles) have been married for several years but once upon a time, Camilla was Charles’ mistress while he was married to Princess Diana.
Just about everyone knows the story of the king’s first marriage and how many of their problems arose because of Charles’ extramarital affair. But fewer people know about another woman who dumped the royal when she saw him and Camilla together. Here’s more on that story which proves the now-queen consort is someone who Charles was never really without no matter who else he was with.
Who Charles dated before Princess Diana
Before he met Lady Diana Spencer, then-Prince Charles had a few girlfriends including Lady Amanda Knatchbull, Lady Jane Wellesley, Lady Sarah Spencer [Diana’s sister), and Anna Wallace.
Wallace was Charles’ last girlfriend before Diana and one he proposed to unsuccessfully more than once. She was the daughter of a wealthy Scottish landowner Hamish Wallace and had been dubbed “Whiplash Wallace” in the press for her fiery temper.
Wallace dumped Charles after seeing him with Camilla
Camilla and Charles met in the early ’70s and began dating but they split when Charles went away with the royal navy. While he was gone Camilla rekindled a romance with her old flame, Andrew Parker Bowles, and they married. That really upset the current king but he and Camilla stayed in contact over the years.
As Express noted, royal author Penny Junor who wrote the book The Duchess: The Untold Story insisted that Camilla was “ever-present in Charles’ life. And as Diana would later bemoan, would influence the then-Prince of Wales when he was dating other women.”
That was something Wallace realized too when the future monarch brought her to parties where he ignored her and danced with Camilla all night. Wallace was furious and refused to take that behavior so she broke up with Charles over it.
According to Junor, “Charles had taken [Wallace] to two successive balls and then danced with Camilla for most of both evenings. Anna dumped him with the words: ‘No one treats me like that — not even you.’”
Princess Diana looked for Camilla at her wedding
A few months after Wallace dumped him, Charles and Diana got together. Charles and Camilla broke off their romantic relationship once he became engaged to Diana but Camilla always being present in Charles’s life is something the princess wasn’t ever comfortable with either.
Even on her wedding day inside St Paul’s Cathedral when all eyes were on Diana as she walked up to the altar to say her vows, the princess was looking for Camilla.
“I knew she was there, of course. I looked for her,” Diana said in her audio tapes to biographer Andrew Morton. “So walking down the aisle, I spotted Camilla, pale gray, veiled pillbox hat, saw it all, her son Tom standing on a chair … vivid memory.”
