UK NEWS

CAMILLA 'WILL BE AS POPULAR AS QUEEN MUM'

All smiles: But can Camilla win over the public?

Saturday May 26,2007

By Richard Palmer, Royal Correspondent

Comment Speech Bubble Have your say(16)

PRINCE Charles’s wife will become as popular as the Queen Mother, her friends will sensationally tell a television documentary to be screened this week.

Camilla already models herself on the Queen, they will say.

The Channel 4 programme, which reveals fresh details of Charles’s secret plans to have the woman he has loved for 37 years crowned his Queen, says courtiers believe she has already become a huge asset to the Royal Family.

Some think she has made Charles a more suitable future monarch by persuading him to moderate his controversial political views.

The programme features interviews with friends including former politicians Lord Gowrie and Lord Carrington as well as the novelist Angela Huth. All break their silence to reveal insiders’ accounts of the royal relationship.

Dignified: The late Queen Mother

But in a reflection of the heated opposition to the royal couple from those who cherish Princess Diana’s memory and believe Charles and Camilla are unfit to reign, the film also carries startling interviews with ordinary people who label the wife of the heir to the throne a “slut”.

Clarence House, bowing to public hostility, has insisted since the couple’s wedding two years ago that it is their “intention” that Camilla will never take the title of Queen and will be known only as the Princess Consort if and when Charles becomes King.

Camilla will be fulfilling the role that the present Queen’s mother fulfilled.

Royal confidant Gyles Brandreth

But that threatens a constitutional crisis. “The general understanding is that the King’s wife is in English law necessarily Queen,” said Professor Stephen Cretney, an Oxford academic lawyer and constitutional expert.

Senior advisers to the Royal Family hope to head off the crisis by massaging public opinion in favour of Camilla becoming Queen. But they face an uphill task. An opinion poll of thousands of Daily Express readers earlier this week found 90 per cent were opposed to her ever becoming Queen.

Yet those in the royal circle of friends and advisers hope that by the time of the next coronation the public will have grown to love her.

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“Camilla will be fulfilling the role that the present Queen’s mother fulfilled,” the biographer and former Conservative MP Gyles Brandreth, a confidant of the Royal Family, told the documentary, which will be screened on Thursday.

“And in that secondary role, people will accept her. She could be as much loved as the Queen Mother.”

IN THE FULLNESS OF TIME

29.05.07, 1:16pm

I do believe that, in the fullness of time, we will see the Duchess of Cornwall become even more warmly embraced as more and more people have an opportunity to see and meet her, and I think that will be a very good thing indeed.. It's unfortunate that the question of her future title has been made, through a relevision programme, the subject of a debate at such an early date; the much-loved Queen appears to be in robust good health and noone really wants to contemplate the death of one who has ruled so long and so well. The question of the future title of the Duchess of Cornwall, who I frankly happen to admire quite deeply, is clearly a matter for another day. In the meantime, we should bear in mind her deep and loving support of the Prince of Wales -- and, through him, her support of all the British people. This is not a petty, vain, or mean-spirited woman we are considering and neither she nor the Prince of Wales is a selfish person. If there is anything decent left in us, we should have some sympathy for the misery of ill-starred first marriages and for the profound conflict Charles felt as he has moved forward to this saner place in his life with Camilla. In a nation where one in three marriages ends in divorce, it is incredible to see members of the Royal family castigated for failures that are accepted and understood when they occur in the lives of their future subjects.

• Posted by: 1Brian • Report Comment

IS THIS A JOKE?

26.05.07, 11:09pm

Although I live in the USA, I have always had respect for the Queen Mum and the present Queen because of the respectful and regal way they have always conducted themselves. These are women that one can look up to and admire because they put duty and country first.
Charles and Camilla put themselves first and destroyed 2 marriages. Diana didn't have a chance in her marriage to Charles.
It is insulting to the Queen Mum to even suggest that an adulerous woman could ever take her place.
I hope Charles and Camilla have a long and happy union. These 2 people have already shown that honor, duty, respect and country all come after their own personal needs.They should step aside and allow Prince William to become king.

• Posted by: mrsh1963 • Report Comment

ARE THEY HAVING A LAUGH !!

26.05.07, 9:04pm

Camilla will be a laughing stock if she tries to imitate any of our royal, grande dames .

Someone should explain to all the advisers , to her & Charles, that we the British public are not fickle, we have long memories & loyalties, qualities neither Camilla or Charles appear to have.
They seem to think a few well timed comments or a bit of muck spreading on Diana will swing it for them.

Well they got that wrong too !!!

We do not want her to be Queen, we will not accept her as Queen.
How could we , after our present one has been so
exceptional.

• Posted by: Katie • Report Comment

POPULAR ? COMMON YES

26.05.07, 8:47pm

Charles Windsor is surrounded by Loyal friends Royal friends and sycophants.As I qualify for none of the aboveI will tell it how it is .Charles
The vast majority of the British public do not care for either you or your wife You chose to marry a woman which most of us find an affront to common decency Your choice not the countrys Therefore I suggest you take a reality check and ride off into the sunset taking your unpopular wife wife with you We know you cannot live without her You can be assured the British public certainly can .

• Posted by: Jay_R • Report Comment

NOT ON YOUR LIFE!

26.05.07, 7:55pm

What an insult to the Queen Mum! Sorry, Camilla, however popular you may become, you will never reach the heights of that Grand Old Lady.

• Posted by: expatalan • Report Comment

WHEN PIGS FLY?

26.05.07, 7:10pm

Sorry, no way will Camilla be popular with the majority of us, never mind as popular as the Queen Mum.

Aliens will land first. No, I take that back as it's quite possible, pigs will fly first.

• Posted by: Rosy • Report Comment