A few times a year, we’re reminded of Andrew Parker Bowles’ existence and his constant presence around King Charles’s wife and sister. APB was Queen Camilla’s first husband and one of Princess Anne’s first boyfriends/lovers. APB has remained in both Camilla and Anne’s lives ever since. Andrew was invited to Camilla and Charles’s wedding and the 2023 coronation. He regularly attends Camilla and Anne’s favorite horse shows and horse races. He even steps in for Camilla and Anne at random funerals and semi-royal events as well. After all of these years, it still feels like Anne and Camilla are sharing him. Well, APB has done it again – he stepped in to represent Anne at a friend’s funeral.
He once temporarily ditched Queen Camilla to embark on a fling with Princess Anne when she was 19 – a scenario gratuitously immortalised in season three of The Crown where the pair enjoy a post-sex Bloody Mary. Now, at the age of 86, Andrew Parker Bowles, who inspired Rupert Campbell-Black in Jilly Cooper’s Rivals, has slipped into a new, and rather more edifying role as a right-hand man to the royals.
On Sunday, Queen Camilla’s ex-husband represented Princess Anne at the memorial service for Clare Balding’s father Ian, according to Daily Mail columnist Richard Eden, after stepping in for the Princess Royal on several previous occasions.
‘I learn that Andrew Parker Bowles formally represented Princess Anne on Sunday at the thanksgiving service for Ian Balding, Queen Elizabeth II’s former race trainer, who died in January aged 87,’ Eden, the Daily Mail’s diary editor, wrote.
It’s the second time in two months that Parker Bowles has stepped in for his ex-girlfriend Anne, having previously stood in her place at Field Marshal Lord Guthrie’s memorial service at the Guards’ Chapel.
The pair are old friends – they got together after a chance meeting at Royal Lodge, the Queen Mother’s home at Windsor, when Andrew was adjutant in the newly formed Blues and Royals regiment, a former aide-de-camp to the Governor-General in New Zealand. Despite his reputation as a practised seducer and the age gap, the attraction between the Princess and the soldier was intense. Indeed, many believe it was revenge that fuelled Camilla’s determined attempts to seduce Prince Charles: if Andrew was going to have the Queen’s daughter as his lover, she would have Her Majesty’s son. She had no trouble attracting Charles, but was said to be truly in love with Andrew – whose Catholic faith meant he was never husband material for Anne.
The relationship fizzled out when he was posted to Germany and he reunited with Camilla. In July 1973, they were married at the Guards’ Chapel in Wellington Barracks, Central London. Despite their divorce 22 years later, Queen Camilla has maintained a strong and close friendship with Andrew – and he even had a special invitation on the guest list to the Coronation in May 2023.
The author Tina Brown has claimed it was Andrew, rather than Charles, who was the love of Camilla’s life. Whatever the truth, the man Brown describes as ‘a walking pink gin’ is said to remain one of her chief confidants.
The way that Camilla and Andrew Parker Bowles have actually spent decades destroying the monarchy from within… it’s like the untold story of modern royal history, actually. Royal biographers are too busy banging their heads against the wall and screaming about Meghan Markle’s wedding tiara, when the real scandal has always been Camilla and APB and how their chaotic and toxic love affair changed the course of royal history. Anyway, it’s so funny to me that Anne would rather send her ex-boyfriend to a funeral… and not her actual husband, Tim Laurence. Or even one of her kids!!
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.
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- Princess Anne & Andrew Parker Bowles at Royal Ascot 2011,Image: 512455570, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: WORLD RIGHTS – Fee Payable Upon Reproduction – For queries call London + 44 (0)20 7421 6000 , New York + 1 646-329-6242 or Hamburg + 49 (0)40 530 240 5959, Model Release: no, Credit line: Michael Webberley / Avalon
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- 114725, Andrew Parker Bowles with his ex-wife Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall at the Cheltenham Festival Ladies Day at Cheltenham Racecourse. Cheltenham, United Kingdom – Wednesday, March 12, 2014. UK, FRANCE, AUS, NZ, CHINA, HONG KONG, TAIWAN, SPAIN & ITALY OUT,Image: 529367368, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: WORLD RIGHTS, DIRECT SALES ONLY UNLESS STATED OTHERWISE IN CAPTION – Fee Payable Upon Reproduction – For queries contact Avalon.red – sales@avalon.red London: +44 (0) 20 7421 6000 Los Angeles: +1 (310) 822 0419 Berlin: +49 (0) 30 76 212 251 Madrid: +34 91 533 4289, Model Release: no, Credit line: i-Images, PacificCoastNews / Avalon
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- Princess Anne, the Princess Royal and Andrew Parker Bowles attend Cheltenham Racecourse on Gold Cup Day.13 March 2009. Picture by /,Image: 542492570, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: WORLD RIGHTS – Fee Payable Upon Reproduction – For queries contact Photoshot – sales@photoshot.com London: +44 (0) 20 7421 6000 Florida: +1 239 689 1883 Berlin: +49 (0) 30 76 212 251, Model Release: no, Credit line: Anwar Hussein / Avalon
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- HRH Princess Anne with her hausband Timothy Laurence and Andrew Parker Bowles seen at Cheltenham Racecourse for day 3, St Patrick’s day, Cheltenham, UK,Image: 671436687, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Credit line: JULES ANNAN / Avalon
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- HRH Princess Anne with Andrew Parker Bowles seen at Cheltenham Racecourse for day 3, St Patrick’s day, Cheltenham, UK,Image: 671436717, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Credit line: JULES ANNAN/Avalon
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- HRH Princess Anne with Andrew Parker Bowles seen at Cheltenham Racecourse for day 3, St Patrick’s day, Cheltenham, UK,Image: 671436959, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Credit line: JULES ANNAN / Avalon
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- The Princess Royal, accompanied by Vice Admiral Sir Tim Laurence speak to guests as they attend the Not Forgotten Association Annual Garden Party at Buckingham Palace in London. The Not Forgotten Association is a tri-service charity which provides entertainment, leisure and recreation for the serving wounded, injured or sick and for ex-service men and women with disabilities.,Image: 873924249, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: *** NO UK USE FOR 48 HRS ***, Model Release: no, Credit line: Victoria Jones / Avalon
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- Members of the British Royal Family attend day 2 of Royal Ascot Featuring: Andrew Parker-Bowles Where: United Kingdom When: 21 Jun 2023 Credit: John Rainford/Cover Images **NOT AVAILABLE FOR PUBLICATION IN THE UK**
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- Queen Camilla kisses her ex husband Andrew Parker Bowles on arrival at Ascot for Queen Camilla at Ascot for the Qipco King George Day races.The Queen had a runner (Handcuffed) in race two Princess Margaret Stakes.It finished out of the places. Featuring: Queen Camilla, Andrew Parker Bowles Where: Ascot, United Kingdom When: 27 Jul 2024 Credit: Cover Images
do you think they all have semi-open marriages? like, anne and andrew are so comfortable with one another and just have been together on and off over the years, he feels like a second husband?
this is why the monarchy should be abolished. there is nothing wrong with all these people having their affairs and being best friends etc. it matters when they run the country and hurt people (meghan) in the process to try and avoid bad press. let them live in the country in their houses and there is no need for them to bother us.
The scandal of the BRF is not that Harry married a biracial American actress and left the UK because of the family’s abuse of her.
The scandals, plural, are that Her Late Maj’s family circle was/is riddled with pedos, and that the current King has been in a decades long polycule involving his own sister.
Write about THAT, Maureen, Yikes, and Jobby!
Involving his own sister! Why isn’t this pointed out more? It’s not literally incestuous but it’s so delightfully bizarre.
I don’t understand what being represented at a funeral means. Either you pay your respects or you don’t. Just send a flower arrangement with a thoughtful note to the family, if you can’t make it.
Right?
All very civilized as the saying goes
I’ve always believed that Camilla never wanted the divorce from Andrew. She loved just being Prince Charles’ mistress. If that tape of the two of them canoodling had never come out, she and APB would still be married, and KCIII would have been a King without a Queen.
It was not the tape that forced the divorce. It was Charles Dimbleby Interview in 1994 where he confessed he was involved with Camilla. Plus in the book based his interviews with Dimbleby he confessed he would keep on seeing Camilla. CHarles forced it. There was no doubt there was an affair when Charles confessed. And the divorce announcement from the PBs came out soon after.
I firmly believe that if Charles conks first, Camilla will remarry APB in a flash.
APB is not a member of the BRF. He is the cheating ex of Queen Sidepiece. Their children are not royal or in the line of succession. Anne was once his sidepiece. And people wonder why people tjink the House of Windsor is trash.
And the question of the day from Kaiser: Why isn’t Anne deputizing Tim, her actual husband who is a legitimate in-law in The Firm?
Twice she’s brought in the walking pink gin to sub for her? Twice?
Really, Anne? How hard was that hit to the head? Do you not remember who your husband is? Did you forget which crate you stored him in?
Honestly, they just “deputize” people already going. Charles and Camilla also do it. And then the papers write about it like this.
Now would be a good to remind the Windsors of their own “slimmed down” monarchy. No “half-in/half-out and all that? And every story about Harry being in Ukraine speaking to the press always contains a line about the fact “Of course Prince Harry doesn’t speak for the royal family or the UK” in an effort to minimize what he’s said. But now they have someone who is NOT a royal member “representing” one in an official capacity?
Tim wasn’t included in the ‘dusty old family’ photo the other day either.
Has he been given his marching orders?
Maybe he’s tired of the bs. Wouldn’t blame him a bit honestly.
So APB has the “half in/half out” royal life, take that any way you want.
I always found it fascinating that Anne had a situationship analogous to Princess Margaret’s in that APB was Catholic, so, ineligible, whereas Townsend was divorced, so also barred from marrying into the BRF on a technicality. Coulda-woulda-shoulda seems a theme with these people. It’s not really that surprising that — having both been compelled to marry people who were deemed suitable — both of them found themselves divorced, at loose ends, and back together, ultimately. APB should’ve married Anne and Charles should have married Camilla.
Woulda shoulda coulda. Royal history would be a snooze fest if everyone married their true love and lived happily ever after. Isn’t the budget soap opera drama kinda the point of them?