Queen Camilla: Behind the scenes with a working royal
Queen Camilla’s limousine stops in front of the crowd of cheering supporters. An aide pulls open the Bentley’s armor-plated door, letting in a rush of cold air. It’s showtime. Her Majesty, wearing a heavy coat, hat and gloves, exits the vehicle to greet the schoolchildren who have waited outside on the clear, frosty February morning in Middlesbrough, northeast England, to catch a glimpse of their queen. It is just one of a couple of hundred events Camilla will attend this year.
Camilla’s journey into royal life has been perhaps the most complicated of any, from her early relationship with King Charles III through his later marriage to Princess Diana and then the gradual move to bring her out of the shadows and into the light.
Much is said about the significance of the moment Queen Elizabeth II in February 2022 said it was her wish that Camilla would be known as queen rather than princess consort, regarded as a ringing endorsement months before the long-reigning monarch died.
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Speaking with Newsweek, an aide brushes off the suggestion that Camilla sees such moments as significant. “It wasn’t the role or title—whether as duchess [of Cornwall] or queen—that appealed to her, it was being with the man she loved.
“That meant accepting the duties that would come with him, even at a time of life when most of her contemporaries were deadheading roses in the garden or having lovely cruises in the Med.
“She was very willing to undertake the role and responsibilities, but it was never part of the goal of what she wanted from life. And of course, it’s come with a lot of hard toil and quite a lot of sacrifice as well because everything she does is now in the public eye.”
Far from retiring, Camilla is looking to the future, taking a powerful message on domestic violence to new audiences. It is a subject that clearly affects Camilla deeply and she was moved by the recent case of Gisèle Pelicot, whose husband Dominique Pelicot repeatedly drugged and raped her for nearly a decade and recruited dozens of men to do the same, filming more than 200 such attacks and storing the files in a folder he named “abuse.”
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“She was tremendously affected by the Madame Pelicot case in France and that lady’s extraordinary dignity and courage as she put herself in the public eye,” a palace source said, “because, as she rightly put it, why should she be made to feel like a victim or hide away in shame?
“And, of course, she helped highlight a very significant societal problem despite all the personal suffering she’d been through.
“So, as a long-term supporter of survivors of domestic and sexual abuse, the queen wrote to Madame Pelicot privately. It was very much her instigation and determination to write to express support from the highest level.”
Gisèle Pelicot is not the only traumatized woman in need of comfort, as Camilla was shown during a visit to Exeter, in southwest England, where victims are hoping for a dedicated refuge.
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Charity Brave Spaces right now offers support from a room at the back of CoLab, a one-stop shop providing support services for a host of vulnerable people. A royal visit, though, is a royal visit and police sniffer dogs still combed the rooms and corridors before the queen arrived and met with staff.
“Sorry, I’m a bit nervous I must admit,” a staff member said as she stumbled over her words. “I wouldn’t worry,” Camilla replied, in typically dry fashion.
A woman, Sarah, tells Camilla she survived a 10-year abusive relationship but Brave Spaces helped her find housing. She now has her own apartment.
Later, the emotion got too much and Sarah cried as a posed picture was being set up. Camilla brought her to the front, ensuring she had pride of place in the photograph, and touched her affectionately on the back. “Big smile,” Camilla said as the cameras flashed.
“The queen is a great advocate for woman, so it was a privilege to be invited to meet her,” Afnan Tellesy, 37, who needed help from Brave Spaces, told Newsweek. “She’s got compassion. It was lovely, I’m proud of all the ladies in this room. I’m proud of how far I’ve come.”
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‘A Stranger to Self-Pity’
Camilla began 2025 with chronic fatigue—a potent reminder of just how much the monarchy had survived the year before. An aftereffect of pneumonia, it had left her too tired at points even to pursue her love of reading. But it did not keep the 77-year-old down for long and Camilla, a palace source explained, is not known for wallowing: “She’s a stranger to self-pity. It’s something she’s inherited really I think from her late father and his wartime experiences.
“They are the ultimate ‘never complain’ family. She’s weathered some pretty stiff criticism over the years but she’s very good at not letting it get to her and just cracking on, driven by a sense of duty and purpose, and self-pity is not seen as an attractive quality in anyone.”
Some storms passed more recently than others. Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, were very much not the never-complain royals, but their broadside is now finally drifting into the rearview mirror, a full two years after his book, Spare.
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The king’s cancer is being managed effectively, Princess Kate’s is in remission and 2025 looks set to be a year of rebirth. Aides hope against hope that the storm has passed. By January 23, Camilla was ready for one of her biggest speeches of the year, as patron of the Anne Frank Trust, days before the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
Camilla arrived at the London Hilton to a frenzy of journalists, lineups and warm words with dignitaries, then schoolchildren, who had readings about challenging prejudice.
Photographers and people with smartphones swarmed behind the kids as the queen said hello to each one. A boy jumped up and down with excitement, while a girl took several deep breaths to still her nerves as her conversation finished.
Rob Rinder, a lawyer and U.K. TV presenter, told Newsweek during the event: “Anti-Jewish racism, antisemitism really, in my lifetime has never been worse and so to have the queen arrive, for her to speak amongst us, has not just a power, not just resonance, it doesn’t just mean there’s a platform and it gets amplified, it means she validates the work of this charity.
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“It’s a fascinating thing about my own grandfather, the idea that you would have told him as he was a slave laborer at Buchenwald [concentration camp] that 80 years on the queen of England would be at an event talking about and reflecting on his lost family, it’s an extraordinary thing.”
Anne Frank loved the royals. She had postcards of Princesses Elizabeth (later queen) and Margaret on her wall and guests were reminded in the speeches of just how much Camilla’s presence at the event would have meant to a teenage girl in hiding from persecution. Camilla has included Frank’s in The Queen’s Reading Room, which started out as her book club and is now her charity.
Rinder said her passion comes from the heart: “When someone’s being inauthentic you can feel it instantly. The thing about Queen Camilla is she’s entirely authentic.”
Authentic it may be, though a degree of composure is also required when making small talk with children as a staff member shouts and grabs the pack of journalists to stop them knocking over a sound system. There was, though, time for Camilla to have a quiet moment with two survivors of the genocide to hear their stories.
Eva Clarke, who was born in Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria in 1945, later told Newsweek: “She’s a very gracious person, interested, sympathetic. All the things that you expect.”
Mala Tribich, 94, who survived Bergen-Belsen, the same concentration camp where Anne Frank died, welcomed the high-profile support: “For me that’s very important because I sometimes wonder, for how long will they remember? Because when all the survivors have gone and the children grow up and no one’s said anything with a personal touch, I think it will gradually fade. But I hope it is never forgotten.”
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Camilla used her speech to give a warning: “The deadly seeds of the Holocaust were sown at first in small acts of exclusion, of aggression and of discrimination toward those who had previously been neighbors and friends.
“Over a terrifying short period of time, those seeds took root through the complacency of which we can all be guilty: of turning away from injustice, of ignoring that which we know to be wrong, of thinking that someone else will do what’s needed—and of remaining silent.”
It is an emotional event and not the only one in recent times. King Charles’ cancer diagnosis must have pushed her aversion to self-pity to its limits. On the one hand, she wanted to help the king but there was a job to do, and these things cannot just be paused.
“It was astonishing how she balanced both of those roles alongside her own private anxieties, in particular during the first period of about a week or 10 days,” an aide said.
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Poignantly, Camilla visited a London cancer center when she knew Charles’ diagnosis but the public had no idea. “She had to undertake public duties knowing that the king had been diagnosed with cancer, including a visit to a Maggie’s center in London, and yet not be able to show the slightest flicker of vulnerability when she went there knowing what she knew privately.”
That was on January 31, 2024, during a period in which Prince William had stepped back from public duties to help Princess Kate, who was recovering from abdominal surgery, which would also lead to a diagnosis of cancer. For a while, Camilla appeared to be carrying the monarchy virtually single-handedly.
“It was exhausting,” the aide continued. “It would have been draining for a woman half her age. But I think if one is to attempt to see a benefit from that period, actually it did give a chance for the media, and the world, to see some of the work that she had always been doing with greater interest and clarity.”
Making a Difference
Another key area for the queen is reading and in February she got to see real-world impact through the National Literacy Trust. Camilla is a book lover but only around 34.6 percent of British children read in their free time. In some of the most deprived areas, including Middlesbrough, where Camilla spent the day on February 13, the trust, with the queen’s help, has bumped this figure up to 41.8 percent.
A little girl joined Camilla on stage at the town hall, one of five given certificates for being star readers. She did a perfect curtsy, one foot neatly behind the other, back straight, while a boy collecting his certificate bowed and was jokingly anointed, as if receiving a knighthood, by author Frank Cottrell-Boyce.
Jonathan Douglas, chief executive of the National Literacy Trust, told Newsweek: “I remember the first time, probably about 15 years ago now, we invited the queen to meet families on one of our projects. She walked into the room and within minutes was sitting on the floor talking to some of the families.”
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She did the same at Middlesbrough Town Hall, where she kneeled on a play mat while younger children busily worked on a craft project. “Oh, it’s leaves,” Camilla said as she deciphered their work. The picture book Stick Man, by Julia Donaldson, lay on the floor next to them.
On another visit in 2019, Douglas said she brought gifts: “She rocked up to meet foster families in Swindon and it had to be a secret meeting, due to safeguarding for the children and families. She brought hampers of goodies from Highgrove [the king’s estate], she brought books for them. It’s not just a passion for reading; it’s a passion for reading linked with a deep empathy for families.”
The trust has opened 1,500 libraries in schools but Camilla’s work with them has also taken her into prisons, where she’s talked to inmates in reading rooms.
A Successful Partnership
A unique feature of King Charles’ reign has been a rise in protests by Republic, Britain’s anti-monarchy campaign group, and Camilla’s visit to Middlesbrough was no exception.
During her “walkabout” with the king, police packed away a small yet noisy gathering of protesters. However, there were far more royal supporters, and Charles and Camilla shook hands and had quick-fire conversations with many of them. The couple also stopped to wish 100-year-old Rona Grafton a happy birthday. “Here’s a card from both of us,” Charles said, offering the centenarian the note traditionally given by the monarch to subjects who reach the milestone.
As they were about to drive off, the queen stopped the driver so they could say hello to a familiar face in the crowd, who had been following the royals for around 30 years. Sheila Clark, 67, from Glasgow, traveled with a friend 190 miles south across the Scottish border just to see the king and queen.
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“They were both in the car,” she said, “and she saw us and deliberately came out to see us because she knows us from Glasgow and London and various other places. We’ve met her behind the barriers for many, many years. She said she wanted to come out to see us.”
Palace insiders say Camilla brings life to her husband: “She has a calming effect but also an energizing influence in that they really do take enormous pleasure in each other’s company. They share a very keen sense of humor. She can jolly him long with great affection—and at the other end of the spectrum, she’s about the only person in the universe who can try to rein him back when he’s undertaking too much because of his insatiable appetite for work.”
Is she successful? “Partially.”
“She has a fabulous friendship support group,” the aide continued. “She relies very much on their support and takes enormous pleasure in the company of extended family. If she had one wish in life, it would be to spend more time with her children and grandchildren but every moment that they are together is precious.”
Art Imitates Life
Not all the work is taxing, though, and the queen was treated to a rather unconventional evening at Buckingham Palace during a reception for the National Theatre on February 18. Andrew Garfield and Cate Blanchett were among the stars to grace the palace’s red velvet carpets, looked down upon by a famous painting of Queen Charlotte, who served as inspiration for the Netflix hit Bridgerton. Rufus Norris, the National Theatre director, introduced Camilla, who worked the room for half an hour before actress Sharon D. Clarke entered in character as Lady Bracknell, the embodiment of upper-class Victorian respectability, from Oscar Wilde’s play The Importance of Being Earnest.
“Ah—there you are, Your Majesty. So delighted you could join me,” Clarke said. “Now, there is a very eager young man awaiting us in the next room. He desires my daughter’s hand; I do not have high hopes. I would value your opinion.”
Later, Camilla told Clarke the play is “one of my favorites, it’s so funny, it really makes me laugh. You are brilliant at it; you got her spot-on.”
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Before then, the queen was escorted into the throne room, where she was treated to a performance of a scene from the Max Webster production, with Clarke being joined by Sex Education actor Ncuti Gatwa and Hugh Skinner, both her co-stars from the show’s recent run in London’s West End theater district. The scene ended with an exasperated Gatwa, playing Algernon, asking Skinner, playing Jack, what they should do with their evening: “Shall we go to the palace?”
“No,” Jack replied. “I can’t abide the palace.”
The queen laughed, while Blanchett clapped and Garfield played things more low-key at the back of the room. It was all in good humor and Camilla—and the royals in general—are well-accustomed to far more stinging barbs than that.
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