With their marriage entering its 20th year, Sky News looks back at the King and Queen’s relationship – from dating in the 1970s to navigating his cancer diagnosis this year.
When Charles married Camilla, nearly eight years after the death of Princess Diana, they had been so publicly vilified that royal aides feared things may be thrown at them.
So on 9 April 2005 – exactly 19 years ago today – they got married in a small, private civil ceremony in Windsor.
While their marriage is entering its 20th year, their relationship stretches back five decades to the early 1970s.
Now, more than a year into their reign, life for the King and Queen is very different. Here we look back at their relationship and how it might weather the challenges they face from now on.
Failed relationship first time around
Prince Charles and Camilla Shand are thought to have met for the first time at a polo match in London in 1970.
Camilla, the daughter of an esteemed military officer, had been in an on-off relationship with Andrew Parker Bowles, a captain with The Blues and Royals regiment of the British Army.
Charles had only been officially invested with the title of the Prince of Wales a year earlier, and was fresh out of Cambridge University and RAF training.
Having bonded over a shared love of polo and countryside pursuits, they dated for around two years, before the prince left to join the Navy and Camilla rekindled her romance with Mr Parker Bowles, marrying him a year later in 1973.
Over the years, many have cited the now King’s military commitments as the reason their initial relationship broke down.
But Michael Cole, former BBC royal correspondent and ex-spokesman for the late Mohamed Al Fayed, recalls it differently.
“It would be wrong to say that he ‘missed the bus’ and could have married her then, but hesitated,” he tells Sky News. “The fact was she loved Andrew Parker Bowles.”
He adds that at that point, Camilla would not have been considered by the Queen and her advisers to be a suitable bride for the heir to the throne because she had a “past” (as it was put then) – meaning earlier relationships before meeting Charles.