Queen Camilla's Son Hits Back at Claim Winning Crown Was Her 'Endgame'

Queen Camilla's son has hit back at claims that his mother's "endgame" was to become queen, in a Thursday podcast appearance.

The comments from Tom Parker Bowles, the eldest of Camilla's two children from her first marriage, follow those made in January by his stepbrother, Prince Harry. When promoting his memoir Spare, the royal said that there were "bodies left in the street" by Camilla "on the way to being Queen Consort."

Appearing on The News Agents podcast in Britain on Thursday, Parker Bowles was asked whether it felt "weird" for the food writer and newspaper columnist now to think of his mother as "the queen."

"Not really," Parker Bowles responded, "because she's still our mother—I say 'our' not speaking the 'royal we', speaking for my sister and me—but she is our mother."

He then went on to quash the idea that Camilla had actively sought to become queen over the course of her 18-year marriage to the now-King Charles III.

"I think change happens," he said, "but I don't care what anyone says: this wasn't any sort of endgame. She married the person she loves, and this is what happened. I think that's it."

When Camilla and Charles married in 2005 following a long and turbulent road to the altar, it was announced that she would take the title of Princess Consort when Queen Elizabeth II died.

Famously described in the 1990s by Princess Diana as the third person in her marriage to Charles, Camilla's popularity among the British people was low at the time of her marriage. This was despite it increasing somewhat since the period surrounding Diana's death in a Paris car crash in 1997.

The Princess Consort concession to the royal marriage was seen as a way of appeasing the public. It would have been an unprecedented title to be held by the wife of a British king.

In 2022, after 17 years of service to the Crown and amid Camilla's increasing popularity in Britain, Queen Elizabeth II announced that it was her "sincere wish" that when the time came, her son's wife would take the rightful title of "Queen Consort." This came into effect when the monarch died on September 8 last year.

Of this decision, royal expert Richard Fitzwilliams told Newsweek: "Every king has had a Queen. Since Camilla was 'non-negotiable' for Charles, there would, logically, have been no other result after they married, though the issue of her title has always been sensitive, especially after Diana's death."

In January 2023, Camilla's stepson Prince Harry published his record-breaking memoir. He told of his experiences of behind-palace-walls life, and his stepmother became one of the royal family members who was most critically analyzed.

In his book, Harry described feeling as if Camilla sacrificed him on her "PR altar." He wrote that she leaked stories about him to boost her own public image, making herself more popular.

Speaking to 60 Minutes' Anderson Cooper in an interview promoting the book, Harry described Camilla's need to "rehabilitate her image" after the damaging period of the 1990s as "dangerous."

"That made her dangerous because of the connections that she was forging within the British press, and there was open willingness on both sides to trade of information," Harry said.

"And with a family built on hierarchy, and with her, on the way to being queen consort, there was gonna be people or bodies left in the street because of that," he added.

In his memoir, the prince also wrote that he and Prince William pleaded with their father never to marry Camilla. She would be constantly compared to their mother, Diana.

Camilla has not publicly responded to the prince's comments about her in either his memoir or interviews promoting it. This is in line with a blanket "no comment" position adopted by all the royal palaces.

Recently, however, one of the new queen's closest friends provided an insight into how she handled the revelations.

The Marchioness of Lansdowne, a long-time friend and recently appointed "Queen's Companion" of Camilla's, told Britain's The Times newspaper this month of Harry's book: "Of course, it bothers her; of course, it hurts. But she doesn't let it get to her. Her philosophy is always, 'Don't make a thing of it and it will settle down—least said, soonest mended.'"

On May 6, Camilla will be crowned queen in a joint coronation with her husband at Westminster Abbey, London. Prince Harry and the extended royal family will be in attendance.

Also represented will be Camilla's children, Tom Parker Bowles and Laura Lopes, and their children. Camilla's three grandsons, Freddy Parker Bowles and Gus and Louis Lopes, will act as her official Pages of Honour during the coronation service.

Newsweek emailed Buckingham Palace for comment.

James Crawford-Smith is Newsweek's royal reporter based in London. You can find him on Twitter at @jrcrawfordsmith and read his stories on Newsweek's The Royals Facebook page.

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