(NEW YORK) — Just over two weeks before Camilla, the queen consort is crowned alongside her husband King Charles III at the coronation, one of her children is speaking out.
Tom Parker Bowles, the eldest of Camilla’s two children, said that he is keeping perspective even as his mom ascends to the throne alongside Charles.
“She’s still our mother,” Parker Bowles said on Thursday’s episode of “The News Agents” podcast, referring to himself and his sister Laura Lopes.
The two siblings were already adults when their mother married Charles, then the prince of Wales, in 2005.
Parker Bowles said he sees his mom’s title of queen as simply being a result of marrying “the person she loved.”
“I don’t care what anyone says. This wasn’t any sort of endgame,” he said on the podcast. “She married the person she loved and this is what happened.”
Camilla and Charles’s blended family will be front and center at the coronation, which will take place May 6, at Westminster Abbey.
Charles’ eldest grandchild, Prince George, the son of Prince William and Kate, the princess of Wales, will serve as one of four Pages of Honor for Charles at the coronation.
Parker Bowles’ son Master Freddy Parker Bowles will join his cousins, Master Gus Lopes and Master Louis Lopes, as Pages of Honor for Camilla. Also joining them will be another relative, Master Arthur Elliot, Camilla’s great-nephew, according to Buckingham Palace.
“I don’t think he knows quite how big it’s going to be. I don’t think he has any sense of the occasion,” Parker Bowles said of his son Freddy. “He’s a 13-year-old boy who loves football.”
Missing from the coronation will be Charles’ two youngest grandchildren, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet, the children of Prince Harry and Meghan, the duchess of Sussex. Buckingham Palace announced earlier this month that Harry will attend the coronation, while Meghan and their children will stay home in California, where the family now lives.
When asked on the podcast about Harry’s attendance at the coronation, Parker Bowles responded, “Nothing to do with me at all.”
On the day of the coronation, Parker Bowles, a London-based food critic, said his role will be to “just get there early and smile.” He said he’ll be thinking most about his mother and stepfather.
“I’m very excited about it,” he said. “I just want everything to go smoothly, and my mother and the king, everyone, to just get through it and do it well and do it proud.”
When asked whether Camilla is anxious about the coronation, a 90-minute service that will be broadcast around the world, Parker Bowles said he believes it’s only natural. He added that he believes Charles and Camilla are doing “amazingly” in their roles as king and queen, which they ascended to last September following the death of Queen Elizabeth II.
“I think anyone would be anxious in an occasion of this sort of importance, in terms of historical,” Parker Bowles said. “I’d be terrified if I had to walk up, wearing ancient robes.”
He continued, “It’s tough to do it, but she’s never complained, she just does it. Gets on with it.”
Describing how he handles his mom’s ascent to the role of queen consort, Parker Bowles said he too just “gets on with it.”
“I just think, as time goes on, you never take it for granted, because it’s not. They are extraordinary,” he said.
He added, “This is an extraordinary occasion and it doesn’t happen very much. But … on it goes. Life goes on and you worry about the day-to-day things of are the children OK … and everything else just rolls along.”
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