Charles and Camilla’s ‘modern family’ attend the coronation
Cardboards picturing Britain’s Camilla, Queen Consort (L) and Britain’s King Charles III are displayed on the window of a pub in a street adorn with Union Jack flags, in Windsor, on May 2, 2023, ahead of the coronation ceremony of Charles III and his wife, Camilla, as King and Queen of the United Kingdom and Commonwealth Realm nations, on May 6, 2023. AFP
LONDON — This weekend’s coronation of Charles III features a divorced king and queen, step-children and step-grandchildren, an ex-husband, a rebellious son and a disgraced brother.
Here is a who’s who in Charles and Camilla’s “modern family”.
The royal couple
Charles, 74, divorced his first wife, Princess Diana, in 1996 after a very public “War of the Waleses”. Diana died in a car crash in 1997.
Camilla, 75, divorced former British Army officer Andrew Parker Bowles in 1995 after 21 years of marriage.
Charles and Camilla married in a civil ceremony in April 2005 after a long relationship that triggered stiff resistance.
The ex-husband
Andrew Parker Bowles, 83, was a page at the coronation of Charles’s mother Queen Elizabeth II in 1953.
Still on good terms with Camilla, he was invited to her marriage to Charles. He is also the godfather of Charles’s niece, Zara Tindall.
Parker Bowles is a widower after the death of his second wife.
Brothers and sisters
On Charles’s side, his only sister Anne, 72, is a popular, active royal. She divorced Mark Phillips in 1992 and remarried Timothy Laurence the same year.
She had two children with Phillips, Zara and Peter, and now has five grandchildren.
Charles and Anne’s brother Andrew, 63, has been divorced from Sarah Ferguson for many years but they still live together.
Andrew’s friendship with the pedophile US financier Jeffrey Epstein caused a furore, as did his payment to settle a civil sexual assault claim in the United States, without admitting liability.
Stripped of his honorary military titles, he is considered a pariah in the family.
His daughters Beatrice and Eugenie will attend the coronation but his ex-wife will not.
Charles’s youngest brother, Edward, 59, and his wife, Sophie, 58, recently became the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh — titles once held by the late Queen Elizabeth and her husband Prince Philip.
Edward and Sophie have two children, Louise, 19, and James, 15.
On Camilla’s side, her sister Annabel Elliot, 74, is an interior designer and antique dealer. The sisters are close. Their younger brother, Mark, died in 2014.
One of Annabel’s grandsons, Arthur Elliot, will be among Camilla’s four pages of honor.
Children and step-children
Prince William: the 40-year-old heir is married to Catherine, 41. The couple, also known as the prince and princess of Wales, have three children: George, nine, Charlotte, eight, and Louis, five.
Prince Harry: Charles’s rebellious younger son, 38, has been an ardent critic of the royal family since moving to California in 2020 with his wife, Meghan.
He will be on his own at the coronation. Meghan and their two children, Archie, who will be four on Saturday, and 23-month-old Lilibet, will stay at home.
Harry’s recently published autobiography “Spare” was very critical of the royal family, particularly William and Camilla, making a reconciliation unlikely.
Tom Parker Bowles: Camilla and her first husband’s son, 48, is Charles’s godson and speaks highly of the monarch.
A food critic, he is divorced from fashion journalist Sara Buys and has two children.
Laura Lopes: Camilla and Andrew Parker Bowles’s daughter is a 45-year-old art conservator, married with three children.
Grandchildren
Prince George will be Charles’s youngest page of honor at the coronation. He and his siblings may be seen together at the procession after the ceremony.
Freddy Parker Bowles, 13, is Camilla’s grandson and will be one of her pages, alongside Laura Lopes’s 12-year-old twin boys Gus and Louis.
Lola Parker Bowles, 15, and Eliza Lopes, 15, who was a bridesmaid at William and Kate’s wedding, will also be there.
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