Celebrating Queen Camilla’s royal life in pictures on her 77th birthday

Queen Camilla shows off her bond with Prince William as the two lead the royals at the Commonwealth Day service. The pair are believed to have grown closer as they support the King and Catherine through their health battles.

Queen Camilla, wife of King Charles III, celebrates her 77th birthday on 17 July. No doubt there will be much to reflect on as she looks back on the last two years – a period that she might have struggled to imagine. Following the death of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in September 2022, Queen Camilla found herself in a position she never expected: the wife of the reigning King. Then, less than a year after the Coronation, her husband was diagnosed with cancer, and she was thrust even further into the spotlight.

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Queen Camilla, also known as Camilla Parker Bowles, has been married to King Charles III since 2005.

Queen Camilla, also known as Camilla Parker Bowles, is the queen of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth. Born a commoner, Camilla met then-Prince Charles around 1970. They briefly dated but, despite their connection, weren’t serious. Camilla remained friends with Charles after she married Andrew Parker Bowles. In the late 1970s, she and Charles began an affair that spanned two decades and his marriage to Princess Diana. After Camilla and Charles divorced their spouses in the late 1990s, they pursued their relationship in earnest. The public didn’t initially accept Camilla, especially following Diana’s death in 1997, but she married Charles in 2005 and became the duchess of Cornwall. Camilla was named queen consort following Queen Elizabeth II’s 2022 death and her husband’s ascension to the throne. She was crowned queen in May 2023.

Queen Camilla was born Camilla Rosemary Shand on July 17, 1947, in London. She grew up on a large country estate in Plumpton, Sussex, with her parents, Bruce and Rosalind Shand, and her two younger siblings. Her father, a successful wine merchant, was vice lord lieutenant of East Sussex. Her mother was from a wealthy family that developed many parts of London.

From a very early age, Camilla was devoted to horses, an interest she shared with her father. She attended Dumbrells School in Sussex before enrolling at the fashionable Queen’s Gate School in South Kensington at age 11. She told her Queen’s Gate classmates that her family had a connection to Britain’s royal circles, as her great-grandmother had been King Edward VII’s mistress. After leaving Queen’s Gate, Camilla went to a Swiss finishing school called Mon Fertile. She also practiced her French at the Institut Britannique in Paris.

In 1965, Camilla came out as a debutante in London. At the time it was common for upper-class girls to think about the future in terms of marriage. Yet Camilla also had fun in London, where she attended parties, drank, and smoked cigarettes, a habit she’d picked up as a teen.