Prior to being engaged in 1981, Prince Charles and Princess Diana only met 12 times in person, therefore the majority of their relationship took place over the phone. Following their marriage’s first difficulties, the public soon recognized they weren’t living in a fairy tale.

However, Charles was seeing Camilla Shand before he met Diana, and they are now married. Although she was the prince’s favorite, she married another man. To find out what led to Charles and Camilla’s breakup in the first place, keep reading.

Prince Charles and the future Duchess of Cornwall met in 1970 thanks to a mutual friend. They hit it off at a polo match and began dating. Before Charles, Camilla dated Andrew Parker Bowles, a former British Army officer, but their on-again, off-again relationship ended when Andrew and Princess Anne began to date. You did indeed read that correctly. Andrew was dating Charles’ sister while the prince was seeing his ex-girlfriend.

Princess Anne was in love with Andrew, Charles was in love with Camilla, Camilla was having some of it but she was also passionate about Andrew, a friend of Camilla’s told royal writer Sarah Bradford in her book Diana.

By all accounts, Charles would have given anything to have been able to keep Camilla in his life, but when he joined the Royal Navy and was stationed abroad, their relationship came to an end.

When Charles found out that Camilla and Andrew had picked up where they left off while he was away, he was astonished. When he learned she and Andrew had married a few months later, he was even more devastated.

Charles was aware that, despite the fact that Camilla had won his love, he was unable to marry her since she lacked the proper aristocratic lineage to be a good marriage for the future king. The royals wanted the natural successor to marry a virgin, but Camilla wasn’t one.

Despite the fact that Charles and Camilla had always kept in touch, once he married Diana, rumors of an affair began to spread.

In 1993, news broke that the Prince of Wales and his mistress had recorded an explicit conversation in the late 1980s. The scandal has been referred to by the titles Tampongate and Camillagate.

During the call, Charles can be heard saying, “Oh God.  I’ll just slip into your pants or something. It would be so much easier!”  Camilla responded, “What are you going to become, a pair of knickers? I see you’re going to come back as a pair of underwear.”

The year before Diana’s tragic death, 1996, the prince and Diana broke up. On April 9, 2005, Charles married Camilla.