King Charles and Camilla: A Low-Key Anniversary Amidst Health Concerns

The upcoming April 9th will be a different wedding anniversary for King Charles and Camilla than the ones before. According to the monarch's former butler, the sovereigns will celebrate it in private, given the king's health conditions. There will be a low-profile dinner, but the usual exchange of gifts and greeting cards will not be missing, Grant Harrold, who worked for the then Prince Charles from 2004 to 2011, told Express. King Charles, after Balmoral opens a new room in Buckingham Palace: here is the room overlooking the balcony (and how much it costs to visit it) The Marriage "I can't believe it's been 19 years - he added - I was there that day, in church. They will celebrate, but without big celebrations." Charles and Camilla got married on April 9, 2005, thirty years after their first meeting. "They will not organize parties or anything like that. Maybe they will do it for the 20th wedding anniversary. I'm sure there will be a card and then a gift, just as many other people do," the former butler said, according to whom the upcoming anniversary of Charles and Camilla will be an "exciting" and "touching" event, referring to the monarch's shocking cancer diagnosis. "I'm sure this year will be more touching and probably more exciting with everything that's happening - Harrold said - I have no doubt they will be together for the occasion and I'm sure that, behind closed doors, they will probably have a romantic dinner, just between them." Elizabeth's blessing Queen Elizabeth has always been opposed to their union, but in the end Charles and Camilla managed to get married in 2005, once they obtained a divorce from their respective partners. The fact that he had a previous marriage, made his presence in the royal family controversial. On February 10, 2005, they announced their engagement and on April 9, 2005, the civil ceremony took place that made them husband and wife, in Windsor, with the consent of Queen Elizabeth II, the Parliament, and the Church of England. It was Queen Elizabeth herself who during the Platinum Jubilee celebrated in June said: "It is my sincere wish that, when the time comes, Camilla be recognized as Queen." And so it was. How they met Charles and Camilla met in Cambridge, back in 1972. At the time she was engaged to army officer Andrew Parker Bowles, while he had just ended the relationship with Lucia Santa Cruz. And it was precisely the latter who introduced them, convinced that they could be good together: both passionate about books, gardening, horses, dogs, country life. She was right: the two immediately liked each other from the first outings, immediately getting in tune. But the thirty-year-old Charles had little intention of settling down and getting married: in the absence of a concrete life project and a marriage, it was Camilla who broke off the relationship. But on this, biographies are not all aligned. For some, there was the hand of Queen Elizabeth, already ready to introduce to her son a good-looking girl from a good family: precisely one of the Spencer sisters. In 1973 Camilla and Andrew got married and it was Charles who acted as godfather to their firstborn: the two had in fact remained in contact and on good terms. The secret and opposed love At the end of the Seventies, when Camilla's marriage began to falter, the flame with Charles was rekindled. Their love remained secret for years, but they never managed to extinguish it: from a clandestine relationship, they then became husband and wife long after Diana's death (they had to wait until 2005). The Duchess's reputation in the eyes of the subjects has greatly improved, today she is no longer considered the "ugly one", the "homewrecker". In an interview given to Vogue UK on the occasion of her 75th birthday, she admitted to having suffered a lot from certain criticisms, certain looks: "It's not easy. I've been scrutinized for so long that I had to somehow find a way to live with it. No one likes to be looked at all the time and criticized. But I think that in the end, somehow, I rise above all this and go on anyway, I live with it. You always have to go on with life."