Camilla at seventy.

I love that clip. No doubt the Queen would have been able to keep a straight face but Camilla hasn't had years of practice.

Charles always looks happy when they're together.

The English have always had a great fear of some foreigner marrying the queen and making himself king. Going back at least as far as Mary 1. People were appalled at the thought of a spaniard being King of England and even in the 20th century there seems to have been a lot of unease over Prince Phillip. I suppose the odd pair were William and Mary, but there must have been such turmoil after the Civil War, the Restoration and then the ousting of James II that people were happy to accept any arrangement.

Just so unfair Wales and NI have to pay to keep Queen of England

They don't, Ab. We did this months ago. The monarchy is funded by revenue from the Crown Estates not from taxation.

Deedaa
It's not a fear of foreigners; monarchs married nothing but 'foreigners' right up until the 20th century. They had to marry foreigners because they had to marry someone from a family of equal status to themselves. As everyone in Britain was below the monarch in status they couldn't marry a Brit.

After the Reformation the overwhelming fear was of Roman Catholics, not 'foreigners'. James II was deposed because he was RC (and challenging the power of the ruling elite). It was then that Parliament ruled that British monarchs and their consorts had to be Protestant.

Tax payers do pay for queenie and the rest of them

And she's not 'Queen of England', Ab. The monarch has been monarch of Wales since mediaeval times. And was monarch of Ireland for a few 100 years. NI chose to remain in the UK.

This is just fact. The historical rights and wrongs of it are a completely different matter (on which I would probably agree with you)

Annie. The monarch is funded from the Crown Estates, not taxation. Just because you think it isn't doesn't make it untrue. Look it up.

Maizie, we are not taught Welsh history in Wales, so blessed to have the English tell us how it is

The tax payer does pay for the windsors, look it up

Well according to GN's experts on the funding of the monarchy, Scotland is not involved at all.
Has Scotland been granted independence then and l missed it?

No but the present queenie is 50% Scots

I blame the Tudors.

Elizabeth I should have got married, it's all her fault.

The Tudor surname first appeared in the ancestry of Henry VII in the 1420s, when Owain ap Maredudd ap Tudur ap Goronwy ap Tudur ap Goronwy ap Ednyfed Fychan abandoned the Welsh patronymic system and adopted a fixed surname. Had he, as was generally the custom, adopted his father’s name, the English throne would have been occupied for a century by the Maredudd dynasty. He opted instead for his grandfather’s name – a prescient choice, for Tudur or Tudor comes from the Brythonic tud (territory) and rhi (king).

However, would we all be trying to wrap our tongues around ap Maredudd ap Tudur ap Goronwy ap Tudur ap Goronwy ap Ednyfed?
Fychan

sorry, Fychan should come before ?

confusing!

No problem for me , !

Maizie, we are not taught Welsh history in Wales, so blessed to have the English tell us how it is

As far as I understand it the Wales was attached to the English crown through some mediaeval skulduggery and has remained so ever since. I am perfectly happy to have a lesson in Welsh history to show me that this isn't so. I was born and brought up in England, which, I suppose, makes me English, but I don't particularly subscribe to the 'my country right or wrong' school of thought. I am perfectly well aware that the English did some horrendous things to the Welsh, the Irish and the Scots. If I were 'Welsh' I would probably be a paid up member of Plaid Cymru, if I were 'Scots' I'd probably be a Scots Nationalist (like my 'Scottish' nephew, born in Scotland of 'English' parents). I'm agnostic about this.

The tax payer does pay for the windsors, look it up

Well, I've checked again.

First result, Wikipedia

The British royal family is financed mainly by the hereditary revenues of the Crown.[1

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finances_of_the_British_royal_family

Another result says It comes from the treasury and it's funded by taxpayers, according to the BBC.

uk.businessinsider.com/where-does-the-royal-family-get-money-2017-1?r=US&IR=T

But the BBC report linked to actually says:

The Crown Estate has delivered a record £304.1m to the Treasury after the value of its portfolio rose 9.7% to £12bn.
The payout by the estate, which owns London's Regent Street and the entire UK seabed, was up from £285m.
It comes ahead of a review of the Sovereign Grant - taxpayers' money given to the Queen by the Treasury.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-36643314

Now, technically, all money from the Treasury might be regarded as 'taxpayers' money, in that the money 'belongs' to the UK (though where that leaves non-taxpayers I'm not altogether sure) but money received from the Crown Estate is not money raised through taxation; it's profits made from the administration of the crown estates.

As with any historical 'fact' the rights and wrongs of the monarchy and its funding can be debated but you can't turn money raised from the profits of administering an estate into money raised by taxation.

and the entire UK seabed

the things you learn on GN!!

I think there is a lot of PR around Camilla to counteract what the Princes are saying about their mother. As far as she is concerned I rue the day when she becomes Queen. It seems that she goes against the grain and she has certainly reaped more than she has shown. In fact I hate to read about how wonderful she looks at 70. A fortune is spent on her clothes facials hair etc and most women of her age would and do look better at the fraction of the cost.

Csmilla is seventy this year. Diana died twenty years ago this year, just coincidence

helenrj I agree with you. Both Camilla and Charles were much older you would think wiser . . . and should have known better as well as all the Royals who knew what was going on all along and expected Diana to just go along with it. How many of us would be comfortable with that situation . . . so much easier to say what someone should contend with or not when it is not us or our precious daughters eh? And you also expect the Princes to just forget a mother who adored them as they adored her? Personally I think they have been pretty civil all things considering! Charles and Camilla have what they want which was to be a couple . . . wasn't that what was more important to them . . . so that is not enough now? And becoming queen would seem to condone all that sordid back room disloyalty and disrespect to both their families.

Have to agree with you k8tie. I think the marketing of camilla has been in overdrive for years in order for her to become queen. As you said it should be enough that because Diana died so tragically at only 36 i think, it allowed c and c to get together in public ( rather than in secret). How would things have been now had she not been so unfortunate; what a terrible farce the royal family would be.
To ask that ber sons should state their support for camilla being queen is asking a little too much i would suspect.

Her title should remain Mrs Windsor.

There is a book by Camila about to come out, serialized by the Express or Mail (can't remember which) recently, on her side of the story. The timing is appalling with it being 20 years since Diana deaths. Quite frankly I am appalled at the P.R around this who you would have thought would have known better. No thought for Diana sons in this by any of them.

Whatever Diana's faults (we all know her mental health was fragile) she was a good Mom and frankly I find the book appalling. It should not be happening.

As for Camilla I suppose I have softened to her as the years have gone on. Realised the timing of it all when life was very different however the fact remains Diana is dead whilst not directly but indirectly because of the responsibilities of others in that journey.

I think more people would have come to terms with Camilla if Diana had lived and forged out a happy life for herself which is something she was denied.

I still don't believe it was an accident. They weren't going to come out and say otherwise after the inquest. The uproar it would have caused would have been civil war

That said so I wish C & C all the best for the future. However I do believe the crown should bypass Charles and go straight to William

God bless both of them. And I fully believe that Charles will turn out to be one of the greatest monarchs we have ever had.

Well I don't believe in God but if I did, I'd think he'd more than blessed them enough for several lifetimes. Rich, spoilt, entitled, getting just what they wanted and abusing and misusing a young woman along the way. In exactly what way on this planet could he turn out to be one of the greatest monarchs we have ever had. * Dauntless*? I'm sorry but that really is a completely vacuous comment. I don't want Queen Camilla, I don't want King Charles - I don't want any of them but I know we're stuck with them all - but the idea of god blessing them and how wonderful they are ........

And I fully believe that Charles will turn out to be one of the greatest monarchs we have ever had.

Time is running out on that one, I fear

Could be one of the briefest reigns ever, perhaps?