The Prince of Wales is to marry Camilla Parker Bowles, it was announced by Clarence House today. The Prince of Wales and Camilla Parker Bowles will marry on Friday April 8, at Windsor Castle.
 Mrs Parker Bowles will use the title HRH the Duchess of Cornwall after marriage. When Charles becomes King, Camilla will not be known as Queen Camilla but as the Princess Consort. The move will end years of speculation about a relationship which has spanned decades. Mrs Parker Bowless current position meant her status was dogged with problems, including her seating at social functions away from the heir to the throne. They first met at a Windsor polo match in 1970 and again in June 1972 at a London club. The two became very close but the relationship cooled when Charles joined the Royal Navy in 1971. Two years later Camilla married her long-standing admirer, Army officer Andrew Parker Bowles. Throughout the late 1970s Charles and Camilla kept up contact and became close again towards the end of the decade. But Camilla did play a part in encouraging the match between Charles and Lady Diana Spencer, and it is thought he proposed to Diana in the Parker Bowless vegetable garden. After his marriage, in July 1981, Charles remained close to Camilla. Diana was intensely jealous of her husbands relationship with her and quizzed his aides about it constantly. Royal watcher Andrew Morton named Camilla as the other woman in the Princes life and said the Princess referred to her as The Rottweiler. It is thought after Charles and Diana drifted further and further apart, following the birth of Prince Harry in 1984, he eventually returned to his old flame. The depth of their intimacy became clear in 1992 when the so-called Camillagate tape surfaced. In the recording of a telephone conversation between the two, made in December 1989, Charles said: I love you to Camilla and added many other highly personal endearments.
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When the Prince admitted he had committed adultery after his marriage to Diana had broken down, Mrs Parker Bowles was widely assumed, but never confirmed, to be the other woman involved. Diana later went on television to say there had been three people in the marriage and it had been too crowded. Camilla and Andrew Parker Bowles, a former Silver Stickin-Waiting to the Queen, divorced in 1995 and Camilla became a regular visitor to the Princes Gloucestershire home, Highgrove. In April 1997, Camilla took a tentative step into public life when she became patron of the National Osteoporosis Society. An official photograph was released to mark the occasion. In July that year, Charles hosted a party for Camilla to celebrate her 50th birthday. The idea of Charles and Camilla as a couple was gradually being officially introduced to the public. But the tragic death of Diana in August 1997 in a car accident changed everything. Public opinion, Royal advisers thought, would not countenance the idea of Camilla replacing Diana. However, in 1999 Camilla met Prince William and Prince Harry for the first time, and the teenagers and she later hosted a glittering party at Highgrove for 200 guests to celebrate Charless 50th birthday. In recent years, she has regularly accompanied Charles to Princes Trust galas. | 
