Queen Elizabeth II has begun the celebrations for her platinum jubilee, marking 70 years since she become monarch. Unfortunately, things aren’t off to the best start.
In a move that surprised many, she used the occasion to make it known that when she dies, she would like the wife of her son, Prince Charles’, to be known as the Queen Consort. This means she will also be crowned alongside Charles.
How Camilla will be titled once Charles, 73, becomes King has proved a point of controversy for years. As fans of The Crown will know, Charles was famously married to Diana, the late Princess of Wales. However, he had a relationship with Camilla before meeting Diana and continued an affair with her while married. This contributed significantly to the breakdown of his relationship with Diana.
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When Diana died in 1997, for many in Britain, the thought of Camilla replacing her as a potential future queen was inconceivable. Charles and Camilla officially married in 2005, and Camilla was officially titled Princess Consort.
It was believed she would keep this title when Charles became King, like the current Queen’s late husband, who was titled Prince Phillip. On Saturday, marking the anniversary of when her father, King George VI died, the Queen, 95, issued a statement reflecting on her years of the throne and thanking people for their support.
She added: “And when, in the fullness of time, my son Charles becomes King, I know you will give him and his wife, Camilla, the same support that you have given me; and it is my sincere wish that, when that time comes, Camilla will be known as Queen Consort as she continues her own loyal service.”
Related: Sarah Ferguson just threw the entire royal family under the bus… then got hit by the bus herself
While public opinion toward Camilla has softened slightly in the last 15 years, at least among some in the UK where she has proved herself a hard-working member of the Royal Family, not everyone was thrilled by the news. Many saw it as a snub to Diana. Others saw it at another attempt at distracting from Prince Andrew’s upcoming sexual abuse trial in the U.S.
Queen Camilla? I don’t think. pic.twitter.com/ygCC8nSriK
— Mark (@mrkphllps1) February 5, 2022
Anyway Princess Diana in heaven reading tweets about Camilla getting dragged and seeing #AbolishTheMonarchy like😌😊. pic.twitter.com/NyeAZvXmV5
— Claire ✊🏽✊🏾✊🏻✊🏿✊🏼 (@Astroxanda) February 5, 2022
queen of hearts pic.twitter.com/EuTgq6I8pU
— best of diana (@dianaofhearts) February 5, 2022
Queen Elizabeth can publicly support Prince Charles’ Mistress Consort Camilla.
Queen can write letter of support to Boris Johnson’s then mistress Carrie.
Queen publicly supports her sex-offender son Prince Andrew.
But somehow only Meghan Markle gets no support.#RacistRoyalFamily pic.twitter.com/K6cERIXPJN— ?????? (@Mad_Houri) February 5, 2022
Princess Diana in heaven, watching the Queen trying to distract from Prince Andrews court case by reminding the public that they hate Prince Charles and Camilla even more 🥰 pic.twitter.com/phQ5Q4bSOL
— Boom (@TheDuchessBoom) February 6, 2022
was gonna cancel on brunch tmrw but now I have to go so we can take pictures in my Princess Diana sweater to protest this Camilla nonsense ???
— irene anna (@enerianna) February 6, 2022
When ordinary people are having to choose between food and heating I don’t really care what the Queen wants Camilla to be known as.
— Katy (@KatyJayne101) February 6, 2022
Queen Camilla ???
We all know they're announcing this now to distract from the Prince Andrew scandal, right? If the public hates anything more than Andrew, it's Charles and Camilla.
— Jillian Marie (@jillyymariee) February 6, 2022
There is only one true Queen #Diana pic.twitter.com/uLj2dOkwBQ
— LynB (@LyndaBy91748822) February 5, 2022
Prince Charles issued his own statement, paying tribute to his mother’s 70 years as Queen. He went on to reference the Camilla ‘queen’ title: something he is believed to have long desired and lobbied for.
“We are deeply conscious of the honor represented by my mother’s wish. As we have sought together to serve and support Her Majesty and the people of our communities, my darling wife has been my own steadfast support throughout.”
Yesterday, to mark Ascension Day (the anniversary of the day her father died and she ascended to the throne). The UK will continue to celebrate the Queen’s Jubilee with numerous events throughout the year. However, the civil case against Prince Andrew, the Queen’s second son, on sex abuse allegations, is likely to cast a shadow over the whole shebang.
It was revealed over the weekend that Andrew is due to give evidence in a deposition in March. He will face two days of grilling in London under oath by Virginia Roberts’ legal team.
Related: Royal Family “deeply shocked” at what Prince Andrew just demanded
woodroad34
So, what will happen if Andrew gets caught lying under oath during his deposition?
Cam
So Camilla should get a title she didn’t even give her own husband? Sounds like the Royals have no problem throwing tradition out the window when they need a little distracting P.R.
Mr. Stadnick
Prince Phillip was the Queen’s Consort. He wouldn’t get the title of King as it would have made him out rank the Queen who is head of state. The way Prince Albert was not King when Victoria was Queen.
Camilla is Duchess of Cornwall and will become Queen consort not Queen. It is a subtle difference. She has never been titled Princess of Wales as Diana was. Diana would have become Queen when Charles becomes King as his grandmother was Queen not Queen Consort.
None of this has anything at all to do with Andrew and his legal problems.
Cam
@Mr. Stadnick
As I understand it Phillip is called “Prince Phillip” not “Queen Consort Phillip”. Am I off on that?
Heywood Jablowme
@Cam: There’s not a formal rule, ahead of time, on what the husband’s title will be. In Victoria’s time, Albert got the official title of “Prince Consort” but not until they’d been married for many years.
Earlier, as someone notes in this thread, Parliament declared Queen Mary I’s husband King of England (he was already king of Spain) and Parliament also declared Mary II’s Dutch husband King of England. These were very political & religious decisions made when the monarch still had some power. Parliament can still decide such things, of course, but in recent centuries they leave it up to the monarch.
QE2 & Philip may have thought “Prince Consort” sounded too old-fashioned and Victorian for Britons in 1952, who thought of Albert when they heard the term. Philip was officially titled Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. (Oddly, there WAS a tradition that the dynasty name should change to reflect the husband’s line. This would have changed it to House of Mountbatten. Philip is said to have wanted this badly, but Liz said no and insisted it remain the House of Windsor.)
cuteguy
What’s the point of this so called monarchy anyway? It’s dumb and proven to be racist by how they treated Meghan. Abolish this so called monarchy already. It’s a joke and has no power
KountKaunas
Giving the male consort of a British queen regnant the title “king” is not tradition. In the British system of peerage, the king takes precedence over the queen, with no distinction made between king consort and king.
To my knowledge, the only husbands of a queen regnant to officially be made kings were Phillip II of Spain (who was already a king) and William III (who was made king in his own right).
Ronbo
So… we can eliminate them with valid charges of actual ‘sexism’ inherent in the system. Other than the kids and Diana, they seem an odd lot.
Diana reached out to us and other social pariah’s of the time, people that the Queen would have looked down upon – as one might expect from an elderly person. Harry walked the racial equality walk and most of British media draw unnecessary targets on him and his family.
Jim
Shouldn’t the proper title for Camilla be “The Mistress Royal”???
Fahd
The woman married to the King of England always has been the Queen Consort, but I think the Queen Consort being a divorced woman is unique. As far as I know, it also is difficult to reconcile with the Church of England’s positions on divorce, and “King Charles” will after all be the Head of the Church of England.
I think Queen Elizabeth is trying to do everything to avoid problems with the transition to Charles, not the most popular guy. I read that the last time she expressed a “sincere wish” was when she said it was her “sincere wish” that Charles be elected Head of the Commonwealth, and once she said it was her “sincere wish” the votes lined up for him. By saying it is her sincere wish that Camilla be “Queen Consort”, it is an effort to avoid an inevitable conflict if Charles decided to declare it himself once he became king. What else does the Queen have in order to shore up the monarchy than to rally support for Charles?
The Queen has been setting this up for a while by giving Camilla other duties and titles, so I think the article here is more gossip than factually based. I don’t think there’s going to be any distracting from Andrew for awhile, and the love for Diana is resilient.
In any case, if Parliament doesn’t want Camilla to become “Queen Consort”, I read they can nix it. Maybe that democratic process can save us from the unpleasantry of a Queen Camilla at a coronation. Yuck!
Jake123
I’d love to see more of Diana on this blog. She really was a gay icon and did so much work for Aids research and to try lift the stigma.
MikeM
Camilla is not currently titled “Princess Consort”, but Duchess of Cornwall, one of Charles’s subsidiary titles. She said, when she married Charles, that, when he ascended, she wished to be known as Princess Consort and not queen. It has been 25 years since Diana’s death. I’m sure Diana would’ve moved on in her own life and not cared if Camilla carried the title of queen consort. I’m sure they all would’ve come to a mature peace and concentrated on being doting grandparents rather than sworn enemies.
mr_r
I think this headline is a little unfair. As you say in the article, Camilla has become quite popular in the UK. I don’t think it’s necessarily a slight against Diana to give a title to Charles’ wife of nearly 17 years (and 25 years after Diana’s death). People who think this are petty.
And secondly, the suggestion its to distract from the Prince Andrew scandal is purely speculative. It’s most likely it was timed in line with the platinum Jubliee message. I’m sure some people here might think that she timed her 70th year as queen to distract from Andrew.
BigJohnSF
Yes, scheduling the jubilee to distract from Andrew’s troubles required careful planning.
SDR94103
the rottweiler.
M K
They should just bypass the Charles/Camilla mess and have them go on living their self-absorbed country lives and have William step up.
trojanboy
Happily, but sadly for us, they are all so irrelevant that it doesn’t matter what she is called.
They serve no purpose in the 21st century.
Poor Diana too. Even now her memory is being shamed. She was the only one who would have had relevance. The only one who deserved love.
Joshooeerr
I presume the massive over-reach of this story is just a way of inserting the ever-popular headline-grabbing Diana into a story that’s not even remotely about her. It’s hardly a snub to Diana. a) she’s dead. b) she was divorced from Charles when she was alive, so would never have been queen anyway. c) had she stayed married to Charles and lived she would have been Queen, which is a rank above Queen Consort, so Camilla hasn’t even been elevated to the level Diana might have attained – had she not been barking mad (throwing herself down stairs, self-mutilation, an array of eating disorders, delusions, paranoias, etc. not to mention the calculated way she colluded with the media to take down the royals and elevate herself as a saint and martyr). She remains a fairytale figure only because so many people are deeply invested in the myth surrounding her and will happily ignore all the evidence that she was about as sweet and innocent as your average Kardashian. And she had the good sense to die young.
Heywood Jablowme
Diana and Charles were separated but were never divorced.
Queerty seems to have an esoteric and arcane definition of what constitutes “LGBT news.” Is Diana an Official Gay Diva just like Madonna and Cher? Seems strange for an American site like Queerty to declare it so, but apparently that’s how they see it.
MikeM
Diana and Charles were definitely divorced. She received a financial settlement and the suspension of her “HRH” status as a result. Charles had to marry Camilla civilly because of his divorce. Diana and Charles were each free to remarry.
MikeM
There are only two Queen statuses: Queen Consort or Queen Regnant. Elizabeth’s mother was Queen Consort, and so will Kate Middleton be, since neither was heir to the throne. Only the heir and rightful monarch can have the “R” after their regnal name.
inbama
Perhaps if you’d been alive for Diana’s 1989 visit to New York that meant so much to some many people suffering with AIDS, you might be less cruel in your assessment of her.
This from Margaret Heagarty who was director of the pediatric AIDS unit at Harlem Hospital during Diana’s visit:
“She did it spontaneously,” Dr. Heagarty, now retired, recalled recently. “She did the human thing. He was 5 or 6 years old, and she just picked him up and hugged him.”
From Eboné M. Carrington, who met the princess on that visit as a child and is now Harlem Hospital’s chief executive: “Just to be frank. This white woman wanted to hold these Black babies that certain Black people wouldn’t hold — it was something that taught me about being a human, and being kind and caring about other people.”
Heywood Jablowme
As an HIV+ gay guy who’s old enough to remember Diana’s wonderful AIDS outreach (& old enough to mis-remember 1997 too, sorry MikeM!), I have to say I still don’t get it.
Why is Diana considered to be some kind of “gay icon”? Much of the Queerty readership – maybe MOST of the Queerty readership – aren’t old enough to remember her when she was alive. Most of the Queerty readership are Americans, anyway. If her AIDS outreach is supposed to be the reason, Queerty never says that. (We were all admonished incessantly in the ’80s that “AIDS is not a gay disease!” and inbama’s pediatric anecdote corroborates that.) And by extension, Queerty apparently believes that any UK royal story is automatically a “gay” story? Why?
inbama
@Heywood Jablowme
Bill Maher was talking about that, but I think he’s misremembering (perhaps purposely to fit his anti-vax/mask position) as government health policy incompetence.
As I recall, Reagan ignored AIDS and much of the Republican Evangelical base actually wanted no government funds spent on a “homosexual disease” that they viewed as deserved. Conservatives like William F. Buckley came up with ideas like tattooing the infected.
Wanting attention but not wanting to trigger more anti-gay hate, AIDS activists seized on the numbers in Africa and drove the narrative that the same could happen here, and allies like Oprah helped spread the idea.