Queen Camilla may now be the most senior female member of the Royal Family, but this wasn’t always the case. Until her marriage to King Charles, when he was the Prince of Wales in 2005, Camilla subjected to a torrent of abuse and criticism.
Having been romantically involved with Charles during his marriage with Diana, Princess of Wales, Camilla, now 77, was not very popular among the general public during the 1990s. She also experienced a lot of intrusion from the paparazzi, which even resulted in her struggling to leave her home.
While this was undoubtedly a tough time for Her Majesty, her son Tom Parker-Bowles has revealed in a podcast this week that she has a four-word motto for getting through difficult periods of life, with Camilla reportedly relying on the phrase “you have to laugh”.
Speaking on Kate Thornton’s podcast White Wine Question Time this week, Tom said: “As my mother said, you have to laugh.
“If you can’t laugh about certain things… that’s what’s kept her going I think, a sense of humour.
“You have to be able to laugh at things. And whenever things got bad, we just pulled back together like the Roman centurions moving into their tortoise formation with the shields around.
“It was important, that power of togetherness.”
Tom also said that Camilla went through “hell” in the 1990s as a result of the paparazzi, who would often wait outside her home to get a shot of her.
He said on the podcast this week: “During the 90s, it was hell for her, with the paparazzi and being chased at high speeds by these absolute nutters, in sort of cutting you up and they were everywhere, it was a time of unbridled tabloid excess.”
Camilla also addressed the difficulty she faced during this time a few years ago in an article for The Daily Mail, in which she said: “It was horrid.
“It was a deeply unpleasant time and I wouldn’t want to put my worst enemy through it.”