Queen Camilla Is More Like The Queen Mother Than You Realize

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The late Queen Elizabeth II was actually named after her mother, Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Windsor, who was known to many as Queen Elizabeth during the reign of her husband, King George VI. After her daughter acceded to the throne, her title changed to Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother (or just the Queen Mother, or Queen Mum, for short). Although her time as the actual queen only lasted the 16 years of George's kingship, the Queen Mother enjoyed a long career as a working royal until 2002, when she died at the age of 101. Three years later, a very similar person entered into the royal family: Camilla Parker Bowles.

Bowles officially joined the royal ranks when she finally married King Charles, nearly 35 years after they first met. Even though she and the Queen Mother had never worked together, they still had a lot in common. Besides having the same royal job title, Camilla and her grandmother-in-law appear to have some shared character traits. "She's every bit as convincing as the old Queen Mother was when it comes to putting on a sweet smile and saying just the right thing to put people at their ease," royal biographer Christopher Wilson informed the Daily Mail in May 2026. "But — again like the Queen Mum — there's a ruthless streak to Camilla which she takes care to keep hidden from view." Prince Harry seemed to corroborate this in his memoir "Spare," when the Duke of Sussex described Camilla as "dangerous."

Wilson also noted that both women showed deep dedication to their husbands. In 2024, Camilla reportedly restricted Harry's time with Charles at the beginning of his cancer treatment. The Queen Mother also had a spouse with cancer, and in her case, she had the added pressure of dealing with her husband's health issues in private, since it was all kept hush-hush at the time. Looking back, there are actually several other similarities between the two.

Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother wielded significant influence on the royal family, especially when it came to her family's romantic dalliances. This, of course, included King Charles, his marriage to Princess Diana, and his affair with Camilla Parker Bowles. As such, she wasn't afraid to ruffle some feathers to protect The Firm's public image. "She couldn't really understand why Charles couldn't have a mistress and somehow find an accommodation with his wife that would mean they didn't have to get divorced," author Tom Quinn explained in the documentary "The Queen Mother" (via Express).

Even though Queen Elizabeth II and her mother had a close relationship, the two women didn't always see eye to eye, especially when it came to Queen Camilla. For a time after King Charles and Princess Diana's divorce in 1996, they seemed united in their distaste for Camilla. By 1999, however, they began to diverge. After years of excluding Camilla, the Queen Mother reportedly asked Charles and Camilla to visit her in Scotland. "If the Queen Mother meets her, it might help the queen's difficulty over Camilla and encourage the queen to deal with the problem, too," one insider reasoned to the New York Post at the time.

By the following year, Queen Elizabeth also became more supportive of the partnership, so it's possible her mom's actions had the desired effect. While we can't know how the Queen Mother would have felt about Charles and Camilla's marriage, since it happened three years after her death, Charles did propose in Scotland at the very home where, six years earlier, he and Camilla had reportedly met with his grandmother.

Long after Queen Camilla overcame her apparent hurdles with Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, she reportedly got involved in a parallel situation with Catherine, Princess of Wales. Camilla was in the position of the Queen Mother, since she apparently wasn't a fan of Kate Middleton and didn't want a so-called "commoner" to join the royal family. "Camilla was one of Kate's fiercest critics," one of Kate's biographers, Christopher Andersen, asserted to Fox News. "She had no aristocratic blood." 

Camilla's attitude seems kind of ironic, considering she herself "had no aristocratic blood." In fact, some royals (including the Queen Mother) reportedly weren't too supportive when she and King Charles originally dated, citing her penchant for partying as the main disqualification. Similarly, some contend Camilla played a large part in Prince William and Kate's 2007 split. After Kate and William got married, different difficulties arose when Camilla purportedly wanted Kate to change her name's spelling since both women have a "C" as the first initial.

Things apparently didn't get any easier when Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, Duke and Duchess of Sussex, began their relationship. Camilla was allegedly far from enthused about her new step-daughter-in-law early on, and her relationship with the Sussexes remains icy. In 2026, Camilla reportedly didn't intend to visit with Harry and Meghan during their U.K. visit. In this case, Camilla might be learning from the Queen Mother. When the former King Edward VIII and his wife, Wallis Simpson, Duke and Duchess of Windsor, visited the United Kingdom in 1967, the Queen Mother apparently refused to attend a public event with them, though eventually relented. As they say, it runs in the family.