The longer the Duchess of Cornwall has been married to the Prince of Wales – 17 years next July – the more obvious it has become that she is one of the Royal family’s greatest assets. Those of us who have met her know her to be warm, charming, funny, courteous and utterly genuine. I have witnessed her at functions for organisations of which she is a patron in music and the arts and her interest in and knowledge of the subjects is keen and profound. She is rounded, outgoing, not without fault, but fundamentally decent and loyal to family and friends. Her effect on the Prince of Wales, who seemed a somewhat isolated and introspective man before he married her, and one carrying a fearsome burden of guilt after the failed marriage to his first wife and her untimely death, has been remarkable. He is going to be a far better king because of her than he would ever have been had they not been together: that is the greatest service she performs for our country.
Therefore the announcement, on the 70th anniversary of the Queen’s accession, that when her son eventually succeeds her the Duchess will become not Duchess of Lancaster (as had been the intention when she and the Prince married) but Queen Consort is to be welcomed and applauded. Her three predecessors in that role – Queen Elizabeth the late Queen Mother, Queen Mary and Queen Alexandra – would all have recognised in her an ability to perform the most essential function a consort has – to support the Crown in the way, most recently, that the Duke of Edinburgh did.
The Duchess has no side or pretension. What you see is very much what you get, which is the bedrock of her appeal. She is easy-going, natural and a brilliant communicator. On public appearances she has not just that old Royal requirement of putting people at their ease. She is ready with a joke, with self-deprecation and an entirely sincere smile. She dives into everything she does with enthusiasm – in the last few days joining in Chinese New Year celebrations in London, or urging support for a donkey sanctuary in Cairo, or visiting community groups in Kent, including giving a reading of parts of Great Expectations to schoolchildren. In late January she made a powerful speech about domestic violence when addressing guests from Refuge marking their 50th anniversary. She appears absolutely tireless.
She is a classic upper-middle class woman of her generation: without malice, interested in horses, gardening and the great outdoors, a mother and grandmother who, like many of her contemporaries, made an unsuccessful marriage (though one that ended, thanks to the civilised nature of both parties, without rancour). She then fell in love with somebody else’s husband, which caused her to be painted as a figure of obloquy – though many of those who piled it on had behaved no differently in their own private lives, but preferred instead to make her a victim of the old British sport of hypocrisy.
The reason why the confirmation of the legal reality – that she would one day be Queen Camilla – had had to be postponed for more than 16 years was because of the profoundly emotional response to the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. It was as if, once it became inevitable that the Prince of Wales would marry the then Mrs Parker Bowles, it could happen only if she were to suffer some degree of public admonishment – and so it was said she could not be Queen even when her husband became King.
But the Duchess had begun to show her depths of character from the moment her affair with the Prince brought her into the limelight. She maintained the quietness of the grave; her discretion was absolute. Her breeding had taught her that: it is how a ‘proper person’ such as she would inevitably behave, out of regard for her own family, for the other party involved and for his wife and family. That discretion has been maintained absolutely and won her respect not just from the Royal family, from the Queen downwards, but from the general public. The Queen has chosen this time to make the announcement not just because it is the day she has reigned for 70 years, but because she knows that all but a querulous minority of Britons share her own high regard for her daughter-in-law. That regard had already been displayed this year when the Queen awarded the Duchess the Order of the Garter last month.
Whatever the differences between the Duke of Cambridge and his brother the Duke of Sussex, they have both warmly accepted their stepmother into the family: indeed, it is believed that Prince William took the initiative of holding out an olive branch to his father’s partner after a decent period had elapsed following his mother’s death. Nobody had more right to feel aggrieved by her than he and and his brother did: if they can warm to her and admire her, as they do, then it behoves the rest of us to follow suit.
And the future Queen has more than displayed her qualities in the difficult two years through which the country has just passed. Albeit first of all by Zoom, and then from behind a mask, she has been active both in her own right and in accompanying her husband to congratulate and support those who played a front-line role in fighting the pandemic. This was courageous of her, since her age – 75 in July – placed her among the most vulnerable to Covid.
It cannot be stressed enough that she has earned the right to this high honour by being herself: by readily engaging with her husband’s future subjects, by never complaining, by never seeking the limelight, by doing what was expected of her without demur.
She has a natural gift for public service and the good fortune to be able to exercise it to the full. But it is our good fortune too that she can. Nobody longs for the day when another turn of fortune will make her Queen: but when it comes nobody need have any doubt that she will be utterly superb at discharging those duties too, and with her husband providing a popular and reassuring focal point for our country. And her success is not because she has changed as a person to make the people admire her more, it is because the people have changed their view of her and realised she was a very good sort all along.
