It’s never easy to meet the stepkids for the first time – particularly when the child’s parents endured a fractured relationship.
WATCH: Prince William ‘used’ by Prince Charles over Camilla says expert
And sources say Camilla – Prince Charles’s mistress during his marriage to Princess Diana, and later his wife – was “incredibly anxious” about meeting Prince William for the first time.
Their first run-in came just a year after Diana’s death in London, one weekend in 1998.
According to Prince Charles’s biographer Penny Junor, Camilla “offered to leave immediately” – but he decided it was time the pair got to know each other.
Sources claim Charles led his partner off to William’s quarters, and left them alone to talk.
Penny says that when Camilla re-emerged, she breathlessly told staff, “I need a gin and tonic.”
In the decades since, William and Camilla have reached an uneasy truce.
“They’ll never be best friends but their relationship warmed when Camilla was helpful during his own wife’s transition from commoner to princess,” an insider says.
Camilla and Charles’ relationship faced a lot of public backlash after Charles and Camilla’s affair came to light, a story that was rehashed and show the couple in a negative light in the most recent season of The Crown.
During this time, Camilla was often labelled Prince William and Prince Harry’s “wicked stepmother.”
“I was living in London during those years and the backlash against Camilla was awful she was virtually a prisoner in her own home,” royal commentator Angela Mollard previously recalled to New Idea Royals.
“I remember at one stage she lived in the west of England and she was in the local supermarket car park and someone pelted her with bread rolls.”
These days there is not as much bad blood between Camilla and the princes, with Harry telling the press after Charles and Camilla’s wedding in 2005: “She’s a wonderful woman and she’s made our father very, very happy which is the most important thing.”
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