Who is Andrew Parker Bowles? The first husband of Queen Consort Camilla

On May 6, Britons will witness the historic coronation of King Charles III and his wife, Queen Consort Camilla. The guest list for the highly anticipated event will include several known personalities from around the world. However, the event will also be attended by Camilla’s former husband Andrew Parker Bowles. On April 9 2005, Charles married his present wife Camilla. However, the journey to that marriage was a long and turbulent one. 

Camilla’s former husband married the current queen consort in 1973 after having long years of courtship. The couple had two children during the course of their marriage, however, things changed in 1994. In a TV documentary that aired in 1994, Charles admitted to having a close relationship with Camilla. "She has been a friend for a very long time—and will continue to be a friend for a very long time,” Charles stated in the interview, The New York Times reported. The next year, Bowles and Camilla announced their divorce and a year after that Charles and Diana parted ways. Here’s a look at the life of Camilla’s former husband Andrew Parker Bowles. 

A military man

Nicknamed “brigadier”, Andrew Parker Bowles was born in 1939 and is the eldest of the four children of Derek Henry and Ann Parker Bowles. The family was extremely close to UK’s last queen consort and Charles’ grandmother Queen Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon. Bowles has a historic connection with the coronation of UK monarchs. In the year 1953, 13-year-old Andrew served as a Page of Honour at Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation. It was the year 1960 when he was commissioned into the Royal Horse of Guards and slowly and steadily rose in ranks. In 1994, Bowles decided to retire after he was promoted to the brigadier rank and was director of the Royal Army Veterinary Corps. 

Marriage with Camilla

According to the biography of King Charles III, titled “Prince Charles: The Passions and Paradoxes of an Improbable Life', author Sally Bedel Smith stated that Parker Bowles was first introduced to Camilla by his younger brother Simon. The pair first met in the last 1960s and proceeded to have an on-and-off relationship for several years. After a turbulent relationship which eventually sustained, Andrew’s cousin John Bowes Lyon, his father, Derek Parker Bowles, and Camilla's father, Bruce Shand, made the engagement announcement on the British newspaper The Times. "His hand publicly forced, Andrew proposed to his girlfriend of nearly seven years," Smith wrote in the biography. 

On July 4 1973, the couple got married in a Catholic ceremony at the Guards Chapel in London. An interesting fact about the wedding was that it was attended by Queen Mother, Princess Anne and even Princess Margeret. Camilla and Andrew went on to have two children together, Laura Lopes and Tom Parker Bowles. However, things went south when the reports of Camilla having an affair with the then Prince of Wales surfaced. On 3rd March 1995, the couple decided to part ways. Charles and Diana also got divorced in August 1996 and in 2005, Camilla ended up marrying the current British monarch. 

An affair with Princess Anne? 

It has been reported multiple times that Camilla’s first husband dated the sister of King Charles III, Princess Anne. In Charles’ biography, Smith wrote that things didn’t work since Bowes was a Catholic. Smith called Bowles "an unlikely candidate for marriage to a member of the Royal Family". "Even when their romance eventually wound down, they remained lifelong friends," Bedell Smith further added. Despite their so-called “romance” did not work out, the two build a long-lasting friendship. Anne even made Bowles the god-father of her daughter Zara Tindall.

The remarriage 

A year after Bowles announced his divorce from Camilla, he married his friend and confidant Rosemary Pitman. The new couple had a solid marriage and remained married until Pitman passed away in 2010. Pitman was suffering from cancer and at the time of her death, it was reported that Camilla was “deeply saddened” by the news. 

Now Andrew keeps a low profile and is occasionally spotted at the royal family events. He shares a cordial relationship with Camilla and in October 2022, he formally represented Queen Camilla at a funeral for John Bowes-Lyon. Despite all the turbulence and scandal that took over the lives of royal fanatics in the 90s, the couple now shares cordial relations with each other.