Friends of Queen Consort Camilla have denied ‘unfair’ claims by her stepson Prince Harry in ‘Spare’ that she passed on negative stories to the press about him as part of a campaign media to help her marry into the royal family, saying the “last thing she could care about being queen.
‘All Camilla ever did was have the misfortune to fall in love with a prince,’ confidant says told exclusively to the Daily Beast of Camilla, 75, who married King Charles, 74, in 2005 after public scandal over their affair in the 1990s led to her disastrous divorce from Harry’s mother, Princess Diana.
Harry, who previously avoided discussing his stepmother in his infamous Oprah and Meghan Markle interview and Netflix docuseries, accuses her in ‘Spare’ of being a slippery schemer who ‘sacrificed’ him on the “public relations altar” as part of a “campaign to marry [to Charles] and possibly the crown.
The Daily Beast’s source, however, scoffed at Harry’s portrayal.
Literally the last thing she could care about was being queen. It’s absurd, and anyone who knows her knows it’s absurd,” they said.
“All she ever wanted was to support the man she loved.”
Another source close to the royal family told the outlet that Harry’s attacks on Camilla would likely be a turning point in his relationship with his father.
“It is deeply unfair to drag Camilla into this,” the source said, adding that Charles was “betrayed, bewildered and angry” by his son’s statements.
Comments from both sources corroborated similar predictions from last October, when a palace insider says the outlet that Charles wouldn’t tolerate Harry making cruel remarks about Camilla.
“It’s one thing for Harry to attack Charles, he can take it on the chin, but if Harry forces him to choose, posing about Camilla in his book, I have no doubt he will choose Camilla,” said the source, noting that the new king is “incredibly protective” of his second wife.
The Montecito-based prince also claimed in his memoir that he and his brother Prince William begged their father not to marry ‘the other woman’ before finally backing his decision to go ahead with the wedding.
Inside Harry’s Memory Bombs
Harry, 38, also doubled down in a ’60 Minutes’ interview with Anderson Cooper, in which he described Camilla as a ‘dangerous’ person obsessed with ‘the need for her to rehabilitate her image’.
“If you are led to believe… that being on the front page, having positive headlines, positive stories written about you, is going to improve your reputation or increase your chances of being accepted as a monarch by the British public, then that is what you ‘will do’, he explained.
Perhaps aware that going after his stepmother jeopardized his tenuous ties to the royal family, Harry himself backtracked on his statements during a chat with Michael Strahan on ‘Good Morning America’.
“We understand that she was trapped like everyone else in the riptide of events,” he said, adding that he felt “compassion” for the queen consort and did not see her as a “bad mother-in-law”.
Royal confidants, however, are unsure whether Harry can return to the fold after his explosive claims. According to a independent report This week, King Charles will invite Harry and Meghan to his coronation in May, but “it would be very difficult for Harry and Meghan to be there given all that has been said in the interviews and the book”.
“The family expects Harry and Meghan to find a reason not to be there,” the insider explained.
While the possibilities of a tense reunion remain hazy, members of the the royal family showed brave faces Thursday: Prince William and Kate Middleton, now Prince and Princess of Wales, presented a united front as the Royal Liverpool Hospital opened, while King Charles was all smiles in a kilt at the Mid-Deeside Community Shed in Aboyne, in Scotland.
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