Prince Charles’ Private Letter Reveals His Despair Over Camilla, Andrew Bowles’ Engagement

Prince Charles wrote to his friends about his despair over Camilla Parker Bowles and Andrew Bowles’ engagement many years ago.

According to royal biographer Penny Junor, Camilla broke Prince Charles’ heart when she informed him about her plans to wed Bowles. In “The Duchess: The Untold Story,” Junor wrote that in March 1973, Prince Charles was in the West Indies when Bowles asked for Camilla’s hand in marriage, and she said yes.

After learning about their engagement, Prince Charles sent out anguished letters to his friends. In one of the notes he wrote, Prince Charles called the engagement cruel.

“It seemed to him particularly cruel, he wrote in one letter, that after ‘such a blissful, peaceful, and mutually happy relationship,’ fate had decreed and it should only last a mere six months. He had no one to go back to in England,” Junor wrote.

Prince Charles and Camilla dated in 1973, but the latter was not considered as a suitable bride for the heir to the throne. After Camilla and Bowles tied the knot in the 1970s, Prince Charles ended up marrying Princess Diana in 1981.

However, the marriage of the Prince and Princess of Wales didn’t last. They announced their separation in 1992, and their divorce was finalized in 1996. Before their split, Princess Diana starred in an explosive Panorama interview where she declared that there were three of them in their marriage.

Earlier that year, Prince Charles also admitted that he had an affair with Camilla. But he said that he and Camilla dated after he and Princess Diana separated. In his interview with Jonathan Dimbleby for the documentary “Charles: The Private Man, The Public Role,” the future King was asked if he tried to be faithful and honorable to his wife when he took the vow of marriage.

Prince Charles said yes, but Dimbleby pried if he was really faithful to the late Princess of Wales.

“Yes, until it became irretrievably broken down, us both having tried,” Prince Charles said.

Prince Charles went on to marry Camilla in a civil ceremony in 2005. Princess Diana passed away following a fatal car crash in Paris in 1997.