Flirting with a prince turns out to require a special approach.
Next year, King Charles and Queen Camilla will celebrate their twentieth wedding anniversary. Despite the rollercoaster the couple has been through, they are now happier than ever – and this is clearly reflected in the photos of the royal couple. But how do you actually win the heart of a prince? Well, with a dirty joke about your ancestors, apparently.
Alice Keppel
First it’s time to delve into the history books – and then a lot further than 1970, the year in which Camilla Shand and Prince Charles first met. We go back to the year 1868, when Camilla’s great-great-grandmother was born: Alice Frederica Edmonstone, who was soon called ‘flirty Freddie’. In addition to being a flirt, she was known as a beauty and as someone who was nice to everyone. “She radiated, she shone… She was blessed with a cheerful character, but also excelled in making others happy. She was like a Christmas tree with piles of presents for everyone,” said daughter Violet about her mother.
Alice married Lieutenant Colonel George Keppel at the age of 23, but her beauty and charm did not go unnoticed in high society. In London, Alice Keppel quickly found herself at the top of the social ladder, where she also met Edward, Prince of Wales, Prince Charles’s great-great-grandfather. You can already feel it coming: the 56-year-old heir to the throne fell head over heels for 29-year-old Alice. For twelve years, Alice was the mistress of the Prince of Wales and later King Edward VII, until he died in 1910.
Pick up line
In the podcast Royally Obsessed, author Tom Quinn, who wrote the biography of Alice Keppel, among other things, says that Camilla was all too aware of her great-great-grandmother’s royal connections at a young age. According to Quinn, Camilla already started talking about this in one of her very first conversations with Prince Charles. “Before their affair started, she said, ‘Listen, my great-great-grandmother and your great-great-grandfather already had something together, so why don’t we follow in their footsteps?’ So that was her conversation opener!”
Very normal
Although it is not an opening line that we will try out in the pub tonight, according to the royalty expert, it was not even that crazy in the higher circles of Charles and Camilla. “I think it speaks volumes about the way the royal family views something like this. They think it’s very middle class to worry about fidelity within a relationship. Nowadays they have to worry about that more, but in the past it wasn’t an issue at all.”
Infidelity was very common among royal and noble circles (especially in a time of arranged marriages), but that too came with rules, Quinn explains. “It was absolutely unthinkable to sleep with an unmarried woman, but if you slept with the wife of one of your friends, then there was no problem. So there were certain standards, but that is now incomprehensible to us.”
It did work
In any case, this conversation opener worked for Prince Charles. Thirty-five turbulent years later, Camilla and the Prince of Wales tied the knot. And now, after more than nineteen years of marriage, former mistress Camilla has even been given the title of queen. And one would not have expected that even in the days of Alice Keppel.
Source: Town & Country, Royally Obsessed, Glamial archive | Image: BrunoPress/ NL Image
