Princess Anne's brutally honest prediction of Camilla's future as Queen
Princess Anne has a close-knit bond withher brother King Charles, but her relationship with Queen Camilla is said to have been less smooth sailing over the years. These tensions led to Anne making a brutally honest prediction about Camilla's future in the Royal Family, a royal author has claimed.
The author - Angela Levin - made the claims in her book, titled 'Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall: A Royal Survivor' that the relationship between the two women took a long time to warm up. She wrote: "Like many people who didn't know Anne well, Camilla found her frosty demeanour difficult and somewhat unnerving to cope with [at first]".
These days, relations are said to have improved between the two women as "time has proven to be a healer", with Anne's opinion of Camilla becoming more positive over the years.
Levin also claims that "Anne was, for many years, opposed to the idea of Camilla being granted the title of Queen Consort" and even once made the brutal prediction that "Camilla will never be a true queen".
Camilla - who was crowned Queen alongside her husband Charles on 6 May at Westminster Abbey - was previously married to Andrew Parker-Bowles, with whom she shares two children: Tom Parker-Bowles, 48, and Laura Lopes, 45.
Kate Middleton swears by £19.99 rosehip oil that helps 'reduce wrinkles & scars'Anne is said to have dated Andrew herself back in the 1970s, when she was a young woman. As he is a Roman Catholic, she would have been unable to marry him as a member of the Royal Family - because the monarch is the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, Levin claims it would have been "out of the question".
The author claims that this romantic history added a tricky dimension to Camilla and Anne's relationship: "Her relationship with Camilla was particularly awkward as they had both been involved with Andrew Parker Bowles", she wrote.
Anne kept her distance from Camilla when she first entered the royal fold officially, "as much as possible" the biographer claims, adding that "Princess Anne reportedly initially gave Camilla the cold shoulder. It was little consolation that the Princess Royal had also had a frosty relationship with Diana, for whom she had no time before she married Charles, and with Sarah, Duchess of York".
These days, things are much warmer between Anne and Camilla, Levin claimed, writing that Camilla's "sense of duty" eventually won Anne over: "Anne has seen for herself how hard Camilla has worked for the monarchy and her sense of duty. Gradually, she became more amenable".
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