Read Game of Crowns: Elizabeth, Camilla, Kate, and the Throne for Free Online

just sixteen miles from Highgrove, Charles’s lavish country estate west of London.
    As the Duchess of Cornwall and the wife of the heir to the throne, Camilla has at least three official residences of her own—Highgrove, Clarence House, and Birkhall, the fourteen-bedroom residence at Balmoral that had once belonged to the Queen Mother. Yet her undisputed favorite is Ray Mill House, a comparatively cozy sanctuary from the pressures of royal life. It is also the one place where she can spend time with her rambunctious tribe of grandchildren and away from the increasingly curmudgeonly Charles.
    Critics point out that security measures at Ray Mill House alone cost British taxpayers upward of $3 million a year, but it is worth it to this royal couple for yet another reason. After decades spent chasing stolen moments of passion in country getaways or the homes of mutual friends, Charles and Camilla have concluded that cohabitation is anathema to their relationship. They cannot keep their love alive without the excitement that comes from the carefully planned illicit rendezvous, the furtive liaison at their favorite trysting place.
    By 2016, Charles and Camilla are no longer living together in the traditional sense. Instead, he divides his time primarily between Clarence House and Highgrove, while she spends as much time as possible with family and friends at Ray Mill House, waiting for her prince to show up at any time of the day or night—all just as it was during his marriage to Diana.
    “You have to understand that Camilla loved being a royal mistress and all the intrigue that went along with it,” a Wiltshire neighbor said. “Without all the sneaking around, it just wasn’t as much fun as it used to be. So they just set the clocks back and pretend they’re still secret lovers. I’m not really sure they’d know how to do it any other way.”
    Yet on this Saturday morning in June, sex may well be the farthest thing from Camilla’s mind. Instead, as the wife of a future monarch and the daughter-in-law of the current one, she will be called upon once again to play an important part in one of her nation’s most colorful spectacles. Today the annual Trooping the Colour will take place on Horse Guards Parade by St. James’s Park—the ceremony that has marked the sovereign’s official birthday since 1748. Full of pomp and pageantry, this is always one of the most important and colorful public dates on the royal calendar. Edward VII, who was born on November 9, 1841, permanently moved the Trooping the Colour ceremony to its current date because June seemed like a more temperate month for a parade celebrating his birthday.
    During sixty-four years on the throne, Elizabeth II has missed Trooping the Colour only once—in 1955, when a rail strike caused the cancellation of the event altogether. For thirty-six of those years, this occasion also offered the Queen, an ardent equestrienne, the opportunity to ride sidesaddle from Buckingham Palace down The Mall, resplendent in the medal-bedecked red uniform of her royal regiments. In 1981, a young man in the crowd fired blank rounds from a pistol and startled her horse, nearly pitching the Queen to the pavement. Undaunted, Elizabeth continued to attend on horseback for another five years before finally opting to make the journey in a royal carriage. No longer wearing the uniform, she nevertheless always wears the Brigade of Guards badge, a large jewel representing the regiments that participate—the Coldstream Guards, the Welsh Guards, the Irish Guards, the Scots Guards, and the Grenadier Guards.
    This year, Trooping the Colour is even more fraught with historicalsignificance than usual. Although the Queen actually turned ninety on April 21, this Saturday in June is the day that her grateful subjects will mark the occasion with yet another carefully choreographed, but still genuine, mass outpouring of affection.
    It is also one of the two days each year when the Queen releases