When King Charles III wed Camilla Parker Bowles on April 9, 2005, the ceremony was modest but deeply symbolic.
Held at Windsor Guildhall with a blessing at St George’s Chapel, the union marked the official acceptance of a relationship long shadowed by secrecy and scandal.
For Charles, it legitimized the woman he had loved for decades. But many wondered how Princes William and Harry—still mourning their mother, Princess Diana—would react to their father’s second marriage.
Conflicting Memories of the Day
Charles’s former butler, Grant Harrold, offers a lighthearted memory in his book The Royal Butler: My Remarkable Life of Royal Service. He claims that after the ceremony, William and Harry decorated their father’s car with a “Just Married” sign before chasing it as Charles and Camilla left for their honeymoon at Birkhall.
Harry, however, tells a different story in his memoir Spare. He denies pulling such a prank, writing: “There are published reports that Willy and I snuck out of the church and hung JUST MARRIED signs on their car. I don’t think so.
I might’ve hung a sign, BE HAPPY. If I’d thought of it at the time.” What he does recall is a far more somber conversation with his father beforehand: “We support you, we said. We endorse Camilla, we said. Just please don’t marry her. Just be together, Pa.”
Harry’s Harsh Words for Camilla
In Spare, Harry paints a scathing portrait of Camilla, calling her “dangerous” and accusing her of rehabilitating her image at his expense. Palace insiders say he has privately admitted that he could never see anyone but Diana as “Queen” beside his father.
Royal commentator Petronella Wyatt suggested that Harry’s bitterness may stem from envy more than history. “Like most forms of hatred, it seems based on envy; envy of the fact that his father’s marriage to Camilla is, as he has publicly conceded, ‘very happy,’ and envy, perhaps, of the humorous and invaluable support she now gives him,” Wyatt argued.
Allegations of Betrayal
Harry has also accused Camilla and her team of leaking damaging stories about him to the press. In Spare, he recalled that in 2002, palace advisers leaked details of his drug use, spinning it as though Charles had sent him to rehab—“to garner sympathy for Charles as a father and for their relationship.”
The tensions didn’t end there. Harry alleged that in 2019, William was furious after Camilla and Charles’s camp planted negative stories about him, Kate, and their children. “Give Pa and Camilla an inch, he said, they take a mile,” Harry recalled.
Nearly two decades after Charles and Camilla’s marriage, the divide remains. While Charles has found happiness and stability with Camilla, Harry continues to speak openly about his resentment and distrust, framing his stepmother as both a rival and a symbol of everything he lost with Diana.
