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With more than 2,000 guests seated for King Charles’s coronation at Westminster Abbey, Queen Camilla’s ex-husband, Andrew Parker Bowles, was also in attendance at the ceremony.
Here’s what we know about Andrew Parker Bowles and why he attended the coronation and watched his ex-wife become queen.
Parker Bowles’ grandsons were also Queen Camilla’s Pages of Honor in the ceremony.
It’s been widely reported that the Queen and her ex-husband have always been close friends, and that hasn’t changed since the two divorced 28 years ago amid drama and scandal between Charles and Camilla.
A friend of the Queen’s told The Daily Mail: “They are joined at the hip. He arranges so much for her. They have lunch together the whole time. He’s right in there. He was always, and still is, Camilla’s co-conspirator.”
The ex-husband and wife, who have two children, had a complicated marriage but managed to keep a “really good family ethic”, the friend added.
Camilla Parker Bowles and Andrew Parker Bowles divorced in 1995 after 22 years of marriage.
Nicknamed “the brigadier”, Parker Bowles, 83, is a retired army officer.
He has always had a place within royal circles and attended the 1953 Coronation as a Page of Honour for Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation. Parker Bowles has said that his mother was a close friend of the Duke of Norfolk.
Parker Bowles and Camilla married in 1973. He also had a brief fling with Princess Anne, but it’s reported that his commitment to Catholicism ruled him out as a suitor.
Shortly after their marriage, the couple had two children, Thomas and Laura, in 1974 and 1978.
He married Rosemary Pitman in 1996, the year following the divorce. The couple attended the wedding of Charles and Camilla in 2005.
Ms Pitman died of cancer in 2010, Camilla said she was deeply saddened by the news.
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