The things we do for love: we all make sacrifices for love, but, The Daily Mail reports, Queen Camilla has especially sacrificed for her marriage to King Charles. She has “no time to cook for friends and family. Every waking moment on a spreadsheet. And definitely no jeans!”—and that’s just the first half of the headline of the outlet’s article on the subject matter. “Fun-loving Camilla could be putting her feet up by now,” the second half reads, “But the Queen has accepted her new role for love.”
It’s true—by falling in love with the heir to the throne 50 years ago, ultimately carrying on an extramarital affair with him and eventually marrying him, Camilla certainly has sacrificed a quiet life for the one she loves. Camilla’s integration into the Firm has been steady over time, and, as royal expert and Camilla biographer Angela Levin writes for the outlet, as Camilla approaches her first year on the throne as Queen (and Charles, of course, approaches his one-year anniversary as well), “the changes thrust upon his wife Camilla are just as great, if not greater.”
Camilla can find bits of privacy by escaping to her private home, Ray Mill, in Wiltshire from time to time, Levin writes. “After particularly hectic engagements or foreign trips, she can decompress for a day or two, or perhaps a weekend,” she continues. “But everything else is very different. Once known for her spontaneity, her love of riding, good company, and her family, Camilla’s life now runs on rails.”
As Queen, every moment of Camilla’s life is now carefully scheduled—even time set aside for her children and grandchildren. “It’s no longer a matter of popping ‘round or picking up the phone,” Levin writes. “It’s life according to a spreadsheet. There’s little time to cook—and far more time spent with the hairdresser. Her friends understand the constraints but admit it’s hard to see her.”
Camilla, Levin continues, has kept involved with charities that matter most to her, like those relating to domestic violence and children’s literacy, but she has less time to devote to them than she would have liked. Speeches make her nervous, and she hasn’t given an interview since the Coronation three months ago. The breadth of her role has steadily increased over the last five years or so, as Her late Majesty’s health declined, and more sharply over the past two years. “She has undoubtedly learned a discipline and got much more organized,” one of Camilla’s friends tells Levin. “It’s quite something as she is not a naturally organized person. She had to do so because there is so much going on that there wouldn’t have been time for her to see her children or grandchildren, which are so important to her.”
As her first year as Queen comes to a close, “I think the main change is one of confidence, which comes from a real embrace of the duty and responsibility of the role,” another friend tells Levin.
And as for why Camilla is doing this in the first place—love—she and Charles seem more connected than ever, with Levin noting that Charles now puts his arm around her in public, “which I don’t recall seeing when his mother was alive,” she writes. “And this perhaps gets to the heart of the question: why? Why would a fun-loving, free-spirited, irreverent—somewhat lazy—woman sign up for a life of unbelievably hard work and duty at a time she might have hoped to spend life doing exactly as she pleased? The answer, I believe, is love. As it happens, I think she is enjoying her new role, but Camilla is doing this for Charles.”
