CAMILLA’S smile said it all.
Greeted by flag-waving children in Bath just after the Queen announced that she would be crowned alongside Charles at his coronation, the Duchess of Cornwall spoke with new self-confidence.
Wearing a tartan suit, the 74-year-old expressed to an excited crowd her pleasure at returning to her home city, before planting a tree and sitting in a classroom.
“I’d be bottom of the class,” she joked to the children about their maths lesson.
Thirty years ago, few could have imagined Camilla entertaining children in Somerset and that same evening hosting in London a glittering reception for Britain’s Olympic equestrian team.
Back then she was banned by the Queen from entering Buckingham Palace.
Notorious as the “Scarlet Woman”, she had been the target of bread rolls thrown in a supermarket car park by outraged shoppers, disgusted about Prince Charles betraying the saintly Princess Diana.
Even worse, she was utterly humiliated by the untraced release of a secretly taped and sexually charged telephone conversation with Charles.
The notion that Charles would marry Camilla was far-fetched, while the idea she could be the Queen was unimaginable.
Ever since, purposefully and skilfully, Charles has engineered Camilla’s rehabilitation.
Their combined success was marked by the Queen’s declaration on the day she celebrated her accession to the throne 70 years ago, that Camilla was fit to support Britain’s 1,000-year-old monarchy.
Camilla’s golden rule — “It’s about duty and service” — had been rewarded.
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In the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace, Camilla will be Britain’s next Queen.
With one exception, the Queen’s announcement was universally applaud- ed.
There was silence from the Windsors in Montecito, California.
Meghan and Harry said absolutely nothing.
Although always anxious to play up their royal status in America, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex and their two children sent none of the customary congratulations or messages of loyalty to their family in London.
Their insult was surely deliberate.
It has been said by a number of people that Harry has always disliked Camilla and blamed her for wrecking his parents’ marriage.
Perhaps the Sussexes’ deafening silence is Meghan’s way of declaring war.
It is believed that she has never liked Camilla, and I am sure the feelings are reciprocated.
From the outset, Camilla was suspicious about the adventuress from Los Angeles.
She found it hard to believe that Meghan would sacrifice her career and independence to serve silently as a team player devoted to the monarchy.
But, as in all her conduct, Camilla remained tight-lipped.
Even when Meghan and Harry stayed with her and Charles at Castle Mey in July 2018, Camilla was baffled by Meghan’s explanations about her media war with her father Thomas Markle.
Unlike Charles, the Duchess of Cornwall could see through the actress’s coquettish smiles and tactile performance.
The two women are only united in their visceral suspicion of the media, their fondness of relationships with men and their enjoyment of parties.
But otherwise, they are poles apart.
Camilla epitomises the best and — perhaps — the worst characteristics of a practical, solid English upper middle-class woman.
Under-educated, expert as a horsewoman, a poor cook, keen to do good with lots of old friends, she is grounded and not grand.
As is customary in her circle, she is a no-nonsense, self-deprecating, plain speaker with a good sense of humour but critically, when necessary, displays a stiff upper-lip.
As expected, the difference between the Cotswolds and California means that Meghan is in every way the complete opposite.
As a pace-setting, politically correct woke feminist, a supporter of Black Lives Matter, Meghan has nothing to talk about with Camilla.
Even without their political differences, for a girl who was brought up in the Valley, enjoying the sunshine and the Pacific and longing to realise the American Dream, the class-ridden hunting world galloping across the English shires under leaden skies is deeply unattractive.
There is no common ground.
Their choice of clothes epitomises not only their different characters but exposes just what they dislike about each other.
While Camilla dresses in what can politely be called smartly dowdy clothes, and is most comfortable sloshing through the mud in a Barbour and gumboots, Meghan glows best while wearing £20,000 French couture dresses with expensive accessories.
As a fashionista seeking global fame, Meghan’s values appear contrived to fulfil her ambition.
Unlike Camilla, she worked hard at school and, after university, achieved some success as an actress.
To her credit, she created an imaginative website, TheTig, promoting herself and money-earning products.
In parallel, she sought relation- ships to advance her career, as an actress and an aspiring politician.
NO COMMON GROUND
While Camilla certainly did not plot to be Charles’s wife (she was effectively abandoned by her husband, Andrew Parker Bowles), Meghan did seek a husband who could make her famous, and she has been accused of scheming to meet and seduce Harry.
Along the way, Camilla has collected a huge number of friends, while Meghan has instead accumulated hangers-on, some admirers but also many outraged critics, complaining of her mistreatment of them and worse.
It was Kirstie Allsopp, a friend of Camilla, who would say that Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge, was reduced to tears just before the Sussexes’ wedding in 2018, when she heard reports that Meghan was bullying Kate’s staff in Kensington Palace.
Treating staff badly is an absolute sin among the British upper class.
The growing accusations against Meghan for showing a lack of respect to those working long hours for low salaries in the Palace tipped the balance for Camilla.
In her reserved manner — and she spends about three days a week in her own family country house in Gloucestershire — Camilla could not until now directly interfere in the Royal Family’s treatment of Harry and Meghan.
While watching Charles painfully believe that Harry was intent on publicly humiliating him, Camilla undoubtedly provided the comfort and good advice to reassure her husband that he had done the best he could.
She could comfort him that while his authority is challenged by the Sussexes, he would emerge victorious.
During those inevitably endless, tortured and inconclusive conversations, Camilla is the sort who would refer to Meghan as “that minx” — the self-seeking trouble- maker whose antics will always end in tears.
By life-long experience of witnessing the antics of England’s county set, Camilla will have come to know the self-important types who wreck relationships.
But Meghan, Camilla will be clever enough to know, is not only infinitely more refined than the common county hustler, but also more intelligent, calculating and elusive.
Harry’s disloyalty to Charles, Camilla knows, mirrors what appears to many to be Meghan’s exploitation of her royal title to advance her own career without offering even a nod of friendship towards the Royal Family.
That apparent ingratitude rankles Camilla.
She did the opposite.
Although hard up at the time of her divorce, Camilla was never seen to take advantage of her relationship with Charles.
Meghan appears to have done the opposite with Harry.
After staging a Hollywood-style wedding at Windsor, she spent the next year moaning about her treatment by the British media and the Royal Family.
Her hypocrisy began to undermine her popularity.
Although her reputation in Britain has dropped, Meghan is still admired in America.
The Sussexes’ three-day visit to New York last September was a remarkable success.
Climaxing as the lead speakers to a 60,000-strong audience in Central Park, the Sussexes’ encounters with the city’s power brokers were impressive.
They clearly enjoyed solid support among Democrats, minorities and the young.
At the moment, Meghan’s ultimate destination is unclear, but she certainly has the backing to make a bid to star as an American politician.
In parallel, Britain is a lost cause for the Sussexes.
In truth, I suspect Meghan no longer cares whether she is welcome in London.
She has no intention of returning.
But Harry might still regret the breach.
Armed with her new status, Camilla will certainly now contribute to the discussion about whether and how the Royal Family should seek to rebuild relations with the Sussexes or accept their departure.
Undoubtedly, the autumn publication of Harry’s autobiography will cause Charles to tremble.
Harry’s open views could single-handedly wreak havoc across the Royal Family.
Ominously, his silence about the Queen’s elevation of Camilla bodes ill.
With female intuition, Camilla senses that just as Meghan is believed to have destroyed her relationship with her own family, she is doing the same to Harry’s.
Camilla watched Meghan encourage Harry to scorn on TV his father, brother and even his grandparents.
Balanced heads are now needed to avoid a gigantic conflagration.
The first decision will be whether the Sussexes should be welcomed to London to celebrate the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee in June.
As private citizens, they have no right to parade in royal carriages through London or stand on the Buckingham Palace balcony.
Harry’s complaint about his need for police protection could be a ploy to embarrass the family, or an excuse to stay away.
Over the next weeks, Camilla’s common sense will be needed to quietly influence Charles’s decision about the Sussexes’ fate.
