Queen Camilla's 'charm offensive paid off' with William, but she 'didn't fret' over Harry

The relationship between a divorced dad’s children and their stepmother is often complicated – but it’s twice as complicated when at least one of them is the heir to the throne.

But, over the years, Camilla has eventually managed to win Prince William. over, according to Royal expert Richard Eden. In his new podcast Reading the Royals he describes how relations between Camilla and William have slowly thawed.

However, that thaw was uneven, he claims, with Camilla’s focus being very much on the future king. In Prince Harry’s memoir Spare, the Duke of Sussex describes how his stepmother didn’t seem particularly interested in him, while launching a “charm offensive” to court Prince William.

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Certainly the future queen made an effort build to bridges – at least with Prince William. Eden highlights a photo taken at the first Invictus Games in London in 2014, when the two were clearly seen enjoying a joke together.

A decade on, Richard Eden says, they’re still laughing – both now having endured stressful health concerns for their respective spouses – but that early “charm offensive” seems to have paid off.

Prince Harry, for his part, was rather less charmed: "I have a dim recollection of Camilla being just as calm (or bored) as me,” he wrote in his memoir Spare. “Neither of us much fretted about the other’s opinion. She wasn’t my mother, and I wasn’t her biggest hurdle. In other words, I wasn’t the Heir. This bit with me was mere formality.”

According to Harry, he and his brother “begged” their father not to marry Camilla, fearing that it would cause the public to directly compare her with their mother, Princess Diana.

"Willy and I promised Pa that we'd welcome Camila into the family,” he wrote. “The only thing we asked in return was that he'd not marry her.

“‘You don't need to remarry,’ we pleaded. "A wedding would cause controversy.” Later, Harry would accuse Camilla of being “someone who married into this institution and has done everything she can to improve her own reputation, her own image, for her own sake.”

He also recalled his resentment that his new stepmother had turned his bedroom at Clarence House into her personal wardrobe: “I tried not to care,” he writes. “But especially the first time I saw it, I cared.”

Camilla had a similarly rough ride with royal-watchers generally, as she described in an article for Vogue written on the occasion of her 75th birthday: “It's not easy. I was scrutinised for such a long time, but you just have to find a way to live with it.

"Nobody likes to be looked at all the time and criticised – but I think in the end I sort of rise above it and get on with it you've got to get on with life."