When King Charles III wed Camilla Parker Bowles on April 9, 2005, the ceremony was modest but deeply symbolic.

Held at Windsor Guildhall with a blessing at St George’s Chapel, the union marked the official acceptance of a relationship long shadowed by secrecy and scandal.

For Charles, it legitimized the woman he had loved for decades. But many wondered how Princes William and Harry—still mourning their mother, Princess Diana—would react to their father’s second marriage.

Conflicting Memories of the Day

Charles’s former butler, Grant Harrold, offers a lighthearted memory in his book The Royal Butler: My Remarkable Life of Royal Service. He claims that after the ceremony, William and Harry decorated their father’s car with a “Just Married” sign before chasing it as Charles and Camilla left for their honeymoon at Birkhall.

Harry, however, tells a different story in his memoir Spare. He denies pulling such a prank, writing: “There are published reports that Willy and I snuck out of the church and hung JUST MARRIED signs on their car. I don’t think so.

I might’ve hung a sign, BE HAPPY. If I’d thought of it at the time.” What he does recall is a far more somber conversation with his father beforehand: “We support you, we said. We endorse Camilla, we said. Just please don’t marry her. Just be together, Pa.”