Camilla Parker Bowles had a fascinating first meeting with her new stepson, Prince William.
It has been revealed that Camilla thought of running away when Prince Charles told her last minute that she was going to have a sit-down with Princess Diana‘s oldest son.
In his book, royal expert Robert Lacey revealed that Camilla, who had a complicated relationship with Diana, was in full panic mode before, during, and after the meeting.
According to the author, Prince Charles, who was probably aware that it would be an awkward face-to-face, decided to set up Camilla by failing to reveal that Prince William was on his way to talk to her.
When Prince Charles dropped the news to Camilla — this was her reaction: “Her first instinct was to bolt when Charles told her that Wills was on the way. But she powdered her nose, put on a brave face, and smilingly bobbed William a curtsy.”
The royal expert wrote in Battle of Brothers that Prince William was the one who opened the conversation by asking about Camilla’s son.
The journalist stated: “It was William who led the conversation, Camilla recalled, trying to put her at ease with Gloucestershire talk of horses, the hunt and polo. How was Tom (her son who was also Charles’s godson) getting along since leaving Oxford?”
Although the conversation went relatively smoothly, Camilla was rattled and trembling. The book went on to reveal: “After half an hour of the professional chit-chat in which the prince was already quite practiced, the ever-composed teenager made his excuses and left for the movies. William appeared quite unruffled by the encounter – but the momentous meeting had left Camilla, by her own account, ‘trembling like a leaf.'”
After the exchange, William was forced to accept that the woman that his mother hated was now the center of his father’s world.
The biography featured this passage on William’s mental state: “The hard-headed and purposeful fifteen-year-old had realized that this woman whose his late mother, still only a few months in the grave, had hated with such a passion, now occupied a place at the heart of his father’s life. So like it or not, that put Camilla at the heart of his life as well.”
A month later, Camilla had tea with William and Harry, and things did not go as planned. Harry was perplexed when seeing Camilla, and William made her anxious.
The author concluded by: “It was over tea again – this time at Highgrove a month or so later in the company of Tom and Laura Parker Bowles, Camilla’s two slightly older children, with whom William and Harry had already spent some time the previous Easter. Camilla would report that Diana’s younger son had looked at her ‘suspiciously.” But, as with William, the encounter seems to have piqued her own anxieties more than it did the laidback juvenile.”
Time has passed and supporters hope their relationship really has improved.
