Heartbreak as Queen Camilla’s ‘love rival’ dies aged 90 | Royal | News

An aristocrat who has been labelled Queen Camilla’s “love rival” has sadly passed away at the age of 90. Lady Amabel Lindsay, daughter of the 9th Earl of Hardwicke and former wife of the late head of auction house, Christie’s, Patrick Lindsay, is understood to have died earlier this month on November 16.

Writing in his Eden Confidential column for the Daily Mail, Richard Eden recalls how Lady Amabel was once one of the many women competing for the attention of Andrew Parker Bowles, before he went on to marry Camilla Shand in a grand ceremony in 1973.

Lady Amabel had four children from her marriage to Mr Lindsay: Valentine, Laura, Ludovic and James.

Detailing one encounter told to him by his predecessor, Nigel Dempster, Mr Eden writes: “Andrew was living in a flat in Portobello Road, Notting Hill, to which Camilla had a key. One day, she let herself in when he was not expecting her, and she found him flustered.

“She knew someone else was in the flat and, looking around, found Lady Amabel, somewhat disarrayed, crouched behind the sofa.”

Another of Parker Bowles’s notorious relationships after he started dating Camilla in 1967 was with Lady Caroline Percy, the sister of the 11th Duke of Northumberland.

“Camilla was always coming up to me at parties and asking what I was doing with her boyfriend,” Lady Caroline told Mr Dempster. “She was always doing this to girls at parties. But I got fed up with it and said to her, ‘You can have him back when I’ve finished with him.'”

Queen Camilla is not the only royal woman Andrew Parker Bowles has been linked to as Princess Anne and Andrew were incredibly close and bonded over a shared interest in horses.

While they split up many years ago, they remain close friends today and are often pictured together at British horse trial events. They were so close, in fact, that Princess Anne made Parker Bowles one of her daughter Zara’s godfathers when she was born in 1981.

According to King Charles’s biographer, Sally Bedell Smith, in her book Prince Charles: The Passions and Paradoxes of an Improbable Life: In the Shadow of the Throne, Andrew was Catholic and was “an unlikely candidate for marriage to a member of the Royal Family”.