THE first concrete sign that the Prince of Wales was moving towards marriage was last summer when he gave Camilla Parker Bowles the first official acknowledgment of her role in the Royal Family.

She was named alongside the Prince’s sons as a member of his household in an annual review of his activities and spending.

It confirmed the remarkable transformation of the image of Mrs Parker Bowles from one of the most demonised women in the country, who was blamed for the demise of the marriage of Diana, Princess of Wales, to a potential wife of the next King.

The carefully stage-managed process came into the open on Thursday, January 27, 1999, with Operation Ritz — the 15 seconds of camera flashes at the entrance to the London hotel when the Prince and Mrs Parker Bowles appeared in public for the first time, ending at least a dozen years of clandestine meetings.

The public rehabilitation of the image of Mrs Parker Bowles had begun in earnest barely two years after the death of the Princess.

The event was co-ordinated by Mark Bolland, then the Prince’s deputy private secretary, who had been briefing chosen journalists in the name of converting Mrs Parker Bowles from a marriage-wrecking outsider to the “non-negotiable” life partner of the heir to the throne. By use of carefully stage-managed photo opportunities with Princes William and Harry and dependable celebrities, the Prince went from being depicted as an aloof adulterer with an unfortunate habit of talking to plants to a more caring father and opinion former.

Another key figure in the process is Amanda MacManus, who has been Mrs Parker Bowles’s closest aide for the past seven years. She is responsible for organising her diary and supervising her charity work.

In the year after the death of the Princess of Wales there were scarcely any public sightings of Mrs Parker Bowles. The idea that she could ever be seen in public with the Prince was a joke. But the Prince and his companion now regularly go to the cinema, theatre and restaurants together. Public hostility has become more muted. It was why they decided at Christmas, finally, that the time was right to become man and wife.

MISTRESSES IN THE FAMILY

• Louise de Penancoet de Keroualle (1649-1734) Charles II’s French mistress and the mother of Charles Lennox, 1st Duke of Richmond. Both Camilla Parker Bowles and Diana, Princess of Wales, are her direct descendants
  
• Alice Keppel (1869-1947) Edward VII’s mistress, she is Camilla Parker Bowles’s great-grandmother. “My great-grandmother and your great-great-grandfather were lovers. So how about it,” Mrs Parker Bowles is reported to have said to the Prince of Wales
  
• Arabella Churchill (1648-1730) Mistress of James II, half brother of Charles II. Diana was a direct descendent
  
• Lucy Walters (1639-1658) Another of Charles II’s mistresses, Diana was also a direct descendent

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