Camilla's royal affair echoes her great-grandmother's liaison with a king

Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles are set to wed in a civil ceremony on 8 April 2005, but the story of their romance carries a striking historical footnote: Camilla's maternal great-grandmother, Alice Keppel, conducted a lengthy affair with King Edward VII beginning in 1898, well before he ascended the throne.

Like Camilla, Keppel was married throughout the relationship and gradually assumed a semi-official role at the king's side. Legend holds that a young Camilla invoked this ancestral connection when she first met Charles in London in the early 1970s. Some royal historians even suggest Keppel's daughter Sonia, Camilla's grandmother, may have been Edward VII's child.

The two families were further intertwined when Charles befriended Andrew Parker Bowles through polo and later became godfather to the couple's son Tom.

Historical summary. TurkishPress restated this AFP wire report, first published in February 2005, in its own words.