Queen Camilla's Take On Kate Middleton's Cancer Video Won't Help Her Soured Reputation

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For some reason, Catherine, Princess of Wales' gorgeous hair transformation was on Queen Camilla's mind when she watched her September 2024 Instagram video announcing that she was cancer-free. According to the Daily Mail, in royal biographer Robert Jobson's book, "The Windsor Legacy," a well-placed source disclosed that Camilla had referred to Kate Middleton's announcement as a "shampoo commercial" while gossiping with her friends. However, the royal expert was quick to note that she was only making a crack about its high production quality, and ultimately couldn't be happier about Kate's recovery. Still, it's hard to deny the weird joke felt kind of inappropriate given the gravity of the princess' diagnosis. 

Notably, in October 2025, a RadarOnline insider claimed that Camilla's relationship with Kate is messier than most people realize. According to them, the two royals are locked in a subtle yet somehow still noticeable power clash. "Camilla worked hard to establish herself after years of criticism, and she doesn't like the idea of being overshadowed," the royal source dished. "Kate's return has been polished, professional and very 'queenly' — it's obvious she's positioning herself for the future, and that's making Camilla uneasy." 

The source clarified that the two women weren't exactly exchanging barbs in the palace halls, instead they're trying to compete with each other more quietly through their public appearances and royal briefings. We may have seen an example of this reported tension in November 2025, when Kate Middleton attended an important event solo and subtly proved that she was gearing up to take the throne. Ultimately, neither the reported rivalry nor the odd joke seems to be doing anything to mend Camilla's already-damaged reputation.

In August 2024, royal expert Christopher Andersen informed Us Weekly that Queen Camilla initially didn't like the idea of Catherine, Princess of Wales, marrying William, Prince of Wales, believing that the younger woman's relatively ordinary upbringing put her in a lower class. In fact, during an April 2016 chat with the Daily Beast, the royal biographer even posited that Camilla played a huge part in Prince William and Kate Middleton's 2007 split. According to him, the queen consort urged her husband, King Charles III, to pressure his son into either breaking up with or proposing to Kate because she wasn't the right fit for royalty. OK! magazine insiders revealed that Camilla continued to put up a fight even after she didn't get her way too. 

Apparently, the queen consort bestowed a rather brutal nickname on the Princess of Wales: "Kate Simpleton." They also claimed that Camilla had left the princess completely red-faced after a lunch meeting in April 2011, where she lectured her about royal etiquette in a thinly-veiled attempt to remind Kate that she was a regular person and thus completely out of her depth. The source further asserted, "The truth is, the very sight of Kate made Camilla burn with jealousy from the beginning." 

Even worse, they reckoned that the monarch's second wife was wary of the Princess of Wales' addition to the royal family because she knew it would make her the "evil stepmother," while her rival would inherit the beloved reputation of the late Princess Diana, with whom Camilla naturally had her own sordid history.