Much has been written about King Charles's marriage to Princess Diana, which ended in divorce with both admitting to having been unfaithful. According to friends of the monarch, Charles has regrets about the way he handled his relationship with Diana.
The Daily Mail's royal editor, Rebecca English, spoke to friends of King Charles and Queen Camilla for a new article. Discussing The King's divorce from Diana, one source said, "Both of them [Charles and Diana] behaved badly in that first marriage and made decisions that none of us could ever condone...But we can seek to try to understand them." As English wrote, "Charles still deeply 'regrets' the pain and sadness caused."
Charles's friends believe he was placed in an impossible situation. "When you look back on it now, asking someone to sacrifice...happiness for the sake of their public persona seems really quite cruel," one friend explained.
Princess Diana famously alluded to Charles's affair with Camilla during her Panorama interview, saying, "There were three of us in this marriage." According to one of Charles and Camilla's friends, the couple's relationship was somewhat inevitable, despite their respective marriages. "I don't think [Camilla] was ever going to [walk away]," one friend said. "She was committed to him."
When Charles and Camilla did finally tie the knot on April 9, 2005, they were concerned there would be backlash to their relationship. "The Duchess of Cornwall [the title Camilla chose to use rather than Princess of Wales] was an absolute bag of nerves in the run up to [the wedding]," one friend told the outlet. "She was so terrified she couldn't eat and felt sick...in fact she was actually sick, with sinus problems."
On the couple's wedding day, Queen Camilla was reportedly "shaking so much she lost her place in the Order of Service during the ceremony and [Charles] had to touch her hand to reassure her," one source said.
Ultimately, Charles and Camilla's friends believe that the general public realized the couple's relationship was real. "But people recognized at the center of it all were two people who loved each other," one source claimed.
