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Camilla Parker-Bowles Shand) (born 17 July 1947Camilla Parker-Bowles is a member of the British Royal Family. She is the second wife of Charles, Prince of Wales, heir apparent to the thrones of the United Kingdom and the other Commonwealth Realms. Prior to their marriage she had been his longtime partner. As the consort of the Prince of Wales she is the ; she has, however, chosen to be known as Duchess of Cornwall mainly because the former title was so closely identified in the British public consciousness with her husband's first wife, Diana, Princess of Wales. She is known as on July 17, 1947, in London, United Kingdom. Her parents are Major Bruce Shand, a British Army officer turned wine merchant, and his wife, the late Hon. Rosalind Cubitt, eldest child of Roland Calvert Cubitt, 3rd Baron Ashcombe. Among the Duchess's forebears is Thomas Cubitt, who made a fortune constructing much of London's West End for the Grosvenor family. An aunt is Elspeth Howe, the former chair of the Broadcasting Standards Commission. She has one brother, Mark, and a sister, Annabel.

Known since childhood as "Milla", the Duchess spent her early youth in the village of Plumpton, Sussex, where the family home stood opposite the Plumpton Racecourse. She attended Dumbrells School in Sussex, Queen's Gate School in Kensington as well as Mon Fertile, a finishing school in Switzerland. She made her debut in London in 1965. In her youth she worked for a year at the London decorators Sibyl Colefax John Fowler.

In 1973 the then Camilla Shand married Andrew Parker Bowles, a Roman Catholic. They had two children together, Tom Parker Bowles, born in 1974 and Laura Parker Bowles, born in 1978, who were both raised (if nominally) as Roman Catholics, particularly when their paternal grandmother, Dame Ann de Trafford Parker-Bowles, was alive. Andrew and Camilla divorced in 1995.

She was a Lloyd's of London , but is said to have lost most of her private fortune (an inheritance of approximately £500,000 that was derived mostly from her Cubitt ancestors) in the Lloyd's of London insurance market.

She is a dedicated horse-rider and enjoys hunting.

According to genealogist William Addams Reitwiesner, her ancestry is French, English, Dutch, Scottish, and American. She is descended from several families — Treadway, Barnes, Jones, Goodnow, Allen, Brazier and others — who were living in Massachusetts and Connecticut in the 17th and 18th centuries. She also has French Canadian ancestors and is also a descendant of pre-Canadian Confederation Premier of the Province of Canada, Sir Allan MacNab.

The Duchess of Cornwall is related to three other favourites of the British royal family. She is a great-granddaughter of royal mistress Alice Keppel (the Hon. Mrs George Keppel, née Edmonstone, a daughter of Admiral Sir William Edmonstone), who was the last love of the Prince of Wales's great-great-grandfather, Edward VII; the Duchess was born two months before Mrs Keppel's death. Through George Keppel, she is related to Judith Keppel, the first winner of the top prize on the British television game show, George Keppel's brother is the great-great-grandfather of Judith Keppel, making them third cousins once removed.

The Duchess is also a descendant via her grandmother Sonia Keppel of Arnold Joost van Keppel, 1st Earl of Albemarle, a favourite of William III, and of Charles Lennox, 1st Duke of Richmond, the illegitimate son of King Charles II of England by his mistress Louise-Renée de Penancoët de Kérouaille, Duchess of Portsmouth. She is also a grand-niece of Violet Trefusis, a socialite who caused an international scandal in the 1920s by eloping with fellow writer Vita Sackville-West; both women were married at the time.

The relationship between Camilla Shand and the Prince of Wales began in 1971, when they met at a polo match before either of them were married. It ended a year later, reportedly after the Prince delayed proposing marriage. Camilla Shand was married in 1973 to Andrew Parker Bowles, an Army officer, friend of the Prince of Wales. The couple had two children: Tom Parker Bowles (born in 1974), a food columnist for who is a godson of the Prince of Wales) and Laura Parker Bowles (born in 1978).

The friendship between the Prince of Wales and the Parker Bowles continued. The Parker Bowles marriage was reportedly an open one - both had extramarital relationships - and eventually Andrew Parker Bowles took a long-term mistress who later became his second wife, Rosemary Parker Bowles.

The Prince's first wife, Diana, Princess of Wales, publicly blamed the relationship between her husband and Camilla for the break-up of the Wales' marriage; privately, the Princess referred to Camilla, with whom she had originally been on affable terms, as "the Rottweiler". Diana reported that Camilla had known before she did that the Prince of Wales was going to propose to her. The Prince and Mrs Parker Bowles bought one another presents and used the pet nicknames of "Fred" and "Gladys" to one another. The Prince's supporters maintained that Diana's "paranoid fixation" over his friendship with Camilla broke up the Wales' marriage.

The romance became public knowledge upon the publication of , followed by the Camillagate scandal (when a racy phone conversation between Camilla and Charles was secretly recorded and published) and Diana's television interview about her failing marriage. These revelations made Camilla so unpopular that, on one occasion, supermarket shoppers pelted her with bread rolls.[1]

Some claim that the couple's affair had been conducted throughout the Prince's engagement, and that they had been intimate on the night before Charles's marriage to Diana. span Though the timing of these tangled relationships has been much discussed and dissected, reliable published reports indicate that they renewed their romantic relationship in the early 1980s, much prior to the timeframe Diana got involved with Hewitt outside the marriage. After the Prince of Wales's public admission, in a television interview with Jonathan Dimbleby, that he had committed adultery, the Parker-Bowleses announced their own divorce in 1995. They had been living apart for some time, and Andrew Parker Bowles soon remarried.

Though she maintains a residence in Wiltshire, the Duchess of Cornwall primarily lives at Highgrove House and at Clarence House, the former residence of the late Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, which is now the Prince of Wales's official London residence. He spent his early childhood in the house, which was the first residence of his newlywed parents, the present Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom and the Duke of Edinburgh. British newspapers reported in early 2005, in articles about the finances of the Prince of Wales, that, even though they were not married at the time, the prince paid for her jewels and designer wardrobe (among the designers are Giorgio Armani and Oscar de la Renta) and the decoration of her two-room Clarence House quarters by designer Robert Kime.

On February 10, 2005, it was announced that Camilla and the Prince of Wales would marry on 8 April 2005 at Windsor Castle with a civil service followed by religious prayer. On April 4 it was announced that the wedding would be postponed 24 hours until April 9, so that the Prince of Wales could attend the funeral of Pope John Paul II as the representative of the Queen.

The civil service actually took place at the Guildhall, Windsor instead of the castle, due to the constraints that obtaining a wedding licence for the castle would impose. The service was attended by close members of the couple's family. However, the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh did not attend the civil service, with Buckingham Palace explaining that the Queen did not want to overshadow the wedding. Others commented that this was a snub to Charles and Camilla, or explained by the Queen's reluctance to attend a civil wedding due to her position as Supreme Governor of the Church of England. However the Queen and Duke attended the service of religious prayer at St George's Chapel following the civil service, and held a reception for the couple in Windsor Castle afterwards.

Following the wedding, the couple travelled to Birkhall, the Prince's country home in Scotland, near Balmoral Castle. The new couple carried out their first royal duties together during their honeymoon.

Since her marriage, Camilla has been known as "The Prince of Wales and The Dutchess of Cornwall are greeted by President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush on a November 2005 visit to the United States" The Prince of Wales and The Dutchess of Cornwall are greeted by President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush on a November 2005 visit to the United States

Following the royal wedding, the Duchess of Cornwall began to undertake a range of royal duties. Initially, these involved accompanying the Prince of Wales in his official duties. The Duchess also began undertake her own solo duties, visiting a hospital in Southampton. She attended the Trooping the Colour ceremony in London for the first time in June 2005, and made her first appearance on the balcony of Buckingham Palace afterwards.

Following the July 7, 2005 London bombings, the Duchess accompanied the Prince to visit victims of the attack at St Mary's Hospital in Paddington.

In November 2005, the Duchess accompanied Prince Charles on a royal tour of the United States of America, her first offical international tour as a member of the British Royal Family.

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