It hasn’t happened much this year, but in 2023 and 2024, there were some curious attacks on Queen Camilla’s two adult children. The attacks came almost directly from Prince William and his camp, perhaps because William was being told that Tom Parker Bowles was and is a well-connected gossip who tells his mother everything. William reportedly wanted to keep the “entire Parker-Bowles family at arm’s length.” Then William and Kate skipped most of last year’s Christmas festivities in Sandringham, all while Camilla and King Charles entertained Tom Parker-Bowles and Laura Lopes (Camilla’s daughter). Camilla asked her kids to come to Sandringham for Christmas, and while Tom and Laura skipped church, they were included in everything else. William shut up about them after that. It was definitely fascinating. Well, Tom and Laura apparently won’t be in Sandringham this year.
Queen Camilla pleaded with her children, Tom Parker Bowles and Laura Lopes, to join her at Sandringham last year after the King’s cancer diagnosis.
‘My mum said, “I’d love you to come, I haven’t had Christmas with you for a long time”,’ food writer Tom explained at the time. ‘It has been a hell of a two years for them. The older you get, the more conscious you become of mortality, especially with illnesses and the rest of it.’ This year, however, they will not be at the King’s Norfolk retreat. ‘I’m not [spending Christmas at Sandringham],’ Tom tells me, adding: ‘Nor is my sister. It’ll be every other year, one year on, one year off.’
Instead, he’ll be sleeping in the living room in the west London home of his former wife, Sara Buys. He says: ‘It’s back to the sofa at my ex-wife’s.’
Before Camilla became queen consort, the gossip was that she did all of the public-facing Christmas stuff with Charles (the Christmas Eve dinner and chuch-walk on Christmas morning especially) and then she decamped to Ray Mill later in the day, which is when Tom and Laura would bring their kids over and their real family holiday could begin. I kind of wonder if Camilla is going back to that this year – she’ll do all of the queen sh-t at Sandringham, then she’ll head straight to Ray Mill for a few days with her real family. Which will leave Charles all alone, since William doesn’t want to do anything with his father or extended family. And the Sussexes are staying in Montecito, right? There’s been some question about that based on the lack of “the Sussexes are being snubbed for Xmas” stories. Oh well – if Charles wanted to spend the holiday with his sons and grandkids, he should have treated them better.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.
