Camilla Parker-Bowles’ chat-up line to Prince Charles was: “My mother had an affair with your grandfather. How about it?” This brought in a whole new era of repeat patterning. Prince Charles’ grandfather was King George VI (d. 1952). George VI died of a strange form of lung cancer called syphilis.
Partly as a result of their family history, their ever-so-strong desire to be common, and their friends’ relaxed attitude towards Charles and Camilla, their nicknames became “Fred and Gladys”.
Charles and Camilla are third cousins. Charles is following in his parents’ footsteps (second cousins) and his g-g-g-g-grandparents’ footsteps (first cousins) – hence the birth defects, big ears, a general unemployable look, fussiness without result, and non-mainstream sexual habits (the dresser).
Here’s something the royals don’t want you to see. Prince Charles had an illegitimate child with a young servant girl at Balmoral Castle when he was 18. The child was born in 1967 and is now 40 years old (in 2007). I doubt the two of them will ever make it to the postage stamp.