‘Leathery Lizard’ Camilla Made Harry’s Skin Crawl

In his newly released autobiography, Prince Harry recounts how meeting Camilla was like undergoing an injection such was his distaste and hatred of her. He describes her akin to a leathery lizard, hissing and clawing her way around the corridors. Harry idolised his mother Diana, therefore to have an ‘evil entity’ like Camilla take over and replace his mother was a living nightmare. One can almost feel the absolute disgust Harry feels towards this ‘vile interloper’ who killed off Diana’s marriage with Charles.

“Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. That one may smile and smile and be a villain. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in our philosophy.”

Harry portrays himself as a Hamletesque character, and views Charles, his father, as someone poisoned, subverted and corrupted by this woman they call Camilla. Where Diana is portrayed as a being of light, virtuous and truly benevolent, Camilla is portrayed as an evil conniving slithering snake operating in the shadows in Harry’s book.

Evil Stepmother Camilla

Consequently, we will probably never know the truth about what occurred in those heady days. The Netflix Crown series imagined what happened but one should never take such tabloid representations as truth. Whether people take Harry’s words of vitriol and anger as truth is up to the reader, however one must always have balance and the other point of view in any circumstance. The Palace is thus silent, and this allows things like Harry’s accusations to fester, to add doubt as well as to completely besmirch the character of the current Queen Consort. The royal PR machinery has gone to great lengths to clean up Camilla’s image over the past few decades. Could this swift cruel blow from Harry finally reduce the smoke and mirrors to a pile of smouldering rubble?