What You Never Knew About Princess Diana And Camilla Parker Bowles' Relationship

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When it comes to talking about the relationship between Princess Diana and Camilla Parker Bowles, it's very nearly impossible to do so without also talking about the man they both loved, Prince Charles. Camilla and Charles first met in the early 1970s and began dating soon thereafter, but they broke up after Charles left to serve military duty for about eight months. As People shared, Camilla ended up getting engaged to Andrew Parker Bowles while Charles was gone.

Princess Diana met Charles in the late 1970s when the future king was dating her sister, Sarah. As Town & Country notes, Charles and Diana began their own relationship in 1980. Tatler has noted that many believe Charles and Camilla continued with their relationship even while the latter was married.

Of course, most of us know how the story went: Charles and Camilla were unable to stay away from one another, putting Diana in an awfully sticky spot. Here's a look at the relationship that Diana and Camilla had — including the good, the bad, and the downright depressing.

While it's true that Princess Diana and Camilla Parker Bowles were friendly at first, it's also true that Prince Charles deliberately left out one key detail: Princess Diana didn't know that Camilla and Charles had a relationship before she met her future husband. In her book "The Duchess: Camilla Parker Bowles and the Love Affair That Rocked the Crown," royal authority Penny Junor revealed that Charles reportedly never considered how Diana might feel after she found out the woman she thought she was building a friendship with was a former girlfriend and intimate partner of her husband-to-be.

As relayed by the Daily Mail, "It simply hadn't occurred to him that Diana needed to know the truth before someone else told her. Or that she might feel foolish, embarrassed or humiliated to have chatted openly about her feelings for him to a woman she then found had once been a lover."

Charles elected to tell Diana the truth after their engagement was announced. The Daily Mail shared that a friend of Charles' believes the future king never would have been capable of understanding why hiding this information from Diana was painful for her, saying, "He's very interested in objective things, but not subjective, so he couldn't have understood the complexities of her feelings."

Despite the misgivings and questions that Princess Diana had, Camilla and Andrew Parker Bowles were still among those who attended her wedding to Prince Charles. Of course, it's entirely plausible that an invitation was more or less mandatory, as, at the time, Andrew served as the Commanding Officer of the Household Cavalry Mounted Regiment and was in charge of the escort that took Diana and Charles through London on the way to their wedding site, as noted by Good Housekeeping.

In 1991, Diana told biographer Andrew Morton that she could still remember the moment she spotted Camilla at her wedding. As Good Housekeeping shared, she said, "So walking down the aisle, I spotted Camilla, pale gray, veiled pillbox hat, saw it all, her son Tom standing on a chair. To this day you know — vivid memory."

Good Housekeeping also noted that Prince Charles had actually suggested that Tom be part of the wedding party, to serve as a page boy alongside two others. Given that Charles is Tom's godfather, the suggestion wasn't entirely inappropriate, but Diana said no. 

While much has been said and written about Princess Diana's feelings of inadequacy and insecurity about Camilla Parker Bowles, it's also true that, at least at one point, Diana saw herself as the threat to Camilla, and not the other way around. In the book "Diana: Her True Story — In Her Own Words," Diana admitted as much when she said, "[I met her] very early on. I was introduced to the circle, but I was a threat. I was a very young girl but I was a threat" (via Insider).

Of course, in light of what was going on between Camilla and Prince Charles, it's not a surprise that Diana found it impossible to keep the other woman in a positive light in her mind. She later admitted that even confronting Camilla about the affair didn't totally dispel the negative feelings she harbored, though it helped. She explained, "Still the old jealousy and the anger swilling around, but it wasn't so deathly as it had been before" (via Reader's Digest).

At times, it seems like no one knew how inextricably linked Princess Diana, Prince Charles, and Camilla Parker Bowles really were like Diana herself did. After all, the two women had gone from being friends who had a relationship that bordered on being sisterly to enemies towards the end of Diana's marriage, and the man in the middle was the one they both wanted to be with. 

While Princess Diana and Prince Charles had separated in 1992, it's likely that she still felt a sting of animosity toward Camilla in 1994 when Charles admitted that Camilla was very important to him, saying, "She has been a friend for a very long time — and will continue to be a friend for a very long time" (via Town & Country).

When Martin Bashir interviewed Diana on television in 1995, he asked Diana outright if Camilla was a "factor" in the destruction of her marriage. Diana, true to form, had a reply that continues to reverberate throughout royal circles, and that tells you everything you need to know about how she felt about Camilla at that point: "Well, there were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded."