One word: Tampongate. Camilla Parker Bowles and Prince Charles first met in the 1970s and briefly dated. They split up and each married and had kids with other people — Charles to Princess Diana, and Camilla to Andrew Parker Bowles. Throughout their respective marriages, the two were rumored to still be carrying on a romantic relationship (Charles admitted in a biography that they rekindled their love affair after his marriage to Diana had "irretrievably broken down" in 1986). In 1992, a flirty (albeit embarrassing) conversation between Camilla and Charles was recorded and made public, and included a statement from the prince insisting that he wished that he could be her tampon. Yeah.
Charles and Diana split that year, and Camilla and Andrew divorced in 1995. Diana died in a tragic car accident in August 1997, and Charles and Camilla didn't make their first public appearance as a couple until 1999, attending a birthday party at the Ritz Hotel in London. They tied the knot in 2005, but Queen Elizabeth II was not there (as the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, Charles's mother may have been uncomfortable attending the wedding of a divorceé). Camilla thus became the Duchess of Cornwall, as well as the royal stepmother to Princes William and Harry and the fun-loving mother-in-law to Kate Middleton.
