Queen Camilla is “deeply competitive” with King Charles, according to her son Tom Parker Bowles, amid the couple’s constant battle.
King Charles is a keen champion of the environment, wildlife and the outdoors.
He has long been known to be a fan of picking mushrooms; a hobby he pursued on the day his mother Queen Elizabeth II died.
Queen Camilla’s son, food writer Tom Parker Bowles, has revealed that his mother also enjoys foraging for mushrooms, and that she and the King are “deeply competitive about their hauls”.
In his new book, Cooking and the Crown: Royal Recipes from Queen Victoria to King Charles III, Parker Bowles said that wild mushrooms are “somewhat of an obsession” for the monarch and his mother.
Charles was first spotted on a mushroom foraging trip alone in August 2011.
Later, on the day Queen Elizabeth II died in 2022, the King spent an hour at his mother’s bedside at Balmoral and then went to nearby Birkhall to gather mushrooms alone.
Meanwhile, in 2007, while Charles prepared for a service in memory of Princess Diana, Camilla took a trip to Balmoral.
King Charles has developed the hobby of foraging mushrooms
Getty
She was spotted picking mushrooms, accompanied by a royal protection officer.
The reports of the King and Queen being “competitive” come as Camilla’s sister, Annabel Elliot, previously acknowledged that Charles has a “constant battle” living with his wife.
The King, 75, and Queen, 77, have been described by Elliot as “polar opposites” which leads to a lot of “banter” at home.
Elliot revealed in Robert Hardman’s biography, King Charles: New King. New Court. The Inside Story, that the monarch loves his home to have a cold breeze.
Queen Camilla has become ‘deeply competitive’ with her husband
PA
However, Queen Camilla wants her living spaces to be incredibly “warm and cosy”.
This leads to a “constant battle” between the King and Queen about having the windows open.
Elliot added: “There’s a lot of: ‘Oh, darling, you shut the window’, ‘Yes, I have, because we’re all freezing.’ So a lot of banter goes on.”
She concluded that the King “usually wins on that front”, but Queen Camilla “wins most other things”.
