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urging, Camilla subjected herself to a complete makeover. Despite their shared love of gritty country pursuits like gardening and riding, Charles was also a man of refined tastes who spent well over $100,000 annually on his own bespoke wardrobe. His unwavering conviction about how even the smallest things should be done had servants scrambling. They were instructed that lunch must be served on plates marked with the Prince of Wales crest precisely at twelve o’clock. A cup and saucer were to be placed to the right with a silver spoon pointing outward at a twenty-five-degree angle. The royal toast was always served on a silver rack—never on a plate—with three balls of butter (no more, no less) chilled in a small dish.
    Even if His Highness merely asked for a cold drink, staffers knew they were in trouble if he looked into his glass and scowled at what he saw. “He preferred round pieces of ice,” a former valet said, “because he thought the angles made regular cubes ‘too noisy.’ We heard that quite a lot.”
    Prince Charles’s valet, Michael Fawcett, was all too painfully familiarwith his boss’s idiosyncrasies—and his insistence on being catered to in every conceivable way. Fawcett’s duties included squeezing the toothpaste from a silver dispenser bearing the Prince of Wales crest onto the Prince’s toothbrush, lathering his shaving brush, slipping on and tying the Prince’s shoes, zipping up the royal fly, and even holding the specimen bottle while the Prince of Wales gave a urine sample during regular check-ups.
    Things were no different on the road. Charles traveled with his own hand towels, cushioned toilet seat, and toilet paper embroidered with the Prince of Wales crest. There were even written instructions to be passed on to hotel chefs stipulating the “dimensions and texture” of royal sandwiches. Prince Charles’s childhood teddy bear, which always resided in a place of honor amidst the pillows on his canopied four-poster, was also packed up for every trip and then taken out to be tucked under the covers of His Royal Highness’s bed wherever he happened to be. For more than six decades, the only person allowed to mend Prince Charles’s ancient, unraveling teddy was his beloved nanny, Mabel Anderson.
    Pampered and demanding—at his own dinner parties he often ate a different meal from his guests, on Prince of Wales plates and using Prince of Wales utensils—Charles grew up being told that, as far as the Royal Family was concerned, appearances were everything. The Prince knew Camilla would have to streamline her look and adopt an entirely new style if she wanted to be a worthy front woman for what members of the Royal Family wryly called “The Firm.” With Charles’s then deputy private secretary and resident media Svengali Mark Bolland overseeing the entire process, Camilla submitted herself to a handpicked team of dietitians, fitness experts, plastic surgeons, dentists, and cosmetologists.
    Over a six-month period, Camilla underwent a series of face and neck peels, Botox injections, and laser treatments to erase the wrinkles and lines in her face and neck. She also had her teeth whitened and capped, and even hired a full-time hairdresser, Hugh Green of Belgravia’s swank Hugh and Stephen salon, to tend to her champagne-colored tresses.
    Shrinking from a size twelve to a size ten, Camilla also began wearing sleek gowns and chic suits by British designers like Anna Valentine, Antony Price, Bruce Oldfield, and Vivienne Westwood. Each morning, royal dresser Jackie Meakin laid out the day’s wardrobe for Camilla. And each day, Meakin and the Duchess considered how she would look in photographs standing next to the most stylish woman on the planet: the former Kate Middleton.
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    IN APARTMENT 1A OF NEARBY Kensington Palace, Kate sits cross-legged on the nursery floor, feeding a bottle to Princess Charlotte while her big brother plays noisily with a toy dump truck. If anyone needed proof