From open windows to interruptions while reading, the royal couple’s home life includes plenty of playful banter.
King Charles and Queen Camilla’s decades-long relationship has endured scandal, public scrutiny and the demands of royal life. Behind palace doors, however, they share some familiar domestic disagreements.
Speaking in a new BBC documentary, the 79-year-old Queen offered a glimpse into life with the monarch at Clarence House, revealing how his laughter can interrupt her quiet reading time.
Camilla explained that when she is deep in a book, Charles sometimes starts roaring with laughter at something.
“It’s very off-putting,” she said, adding: “I’ll suddenly start weeping, but it’s a lovely, quiet time.”
Reading interruptions are not their only source of disagreement. The 77-year-old King is reportedly particular about his routines, from room temperatures to mealtimes and travel arrangements.
In his book Charles III: New King. New Court. The Inside Story, author and journalist Robert Hardman describes the couple’s ongoing tussle over whether to keep the windows open.
“There’s a constant battle about it,” he writes.
“He will have opened it. She will creep in behind and shut it. So there’s a lot of: ‘Oh, darling, you shut the window.’ ‘Yes, I have, because we’re all freezing.’ So a lot of banter goes on.”
Former royal staff have also shared claims about Charles’s bathroom routines, including an alleged preference for having one inch of toothpaste squeezed onto his toothbrush each morning.
The late Queen Elizabeth II’s son reportedly prefers a tepid bath, with the tub filled only halfway.
Princess Diana’s former butler, Paul Burrell, described these preferences in the documentary Serving the Royals: Inside the Firm.
“The water temperature has to be just tepid,” he said, adding that the bath must be “half-full,” with the plug “in a certain position.”
Charles’s exercise habits have also attracted attention. In his memoir Spare, Prince Harry recalled coming across his father hanging upside down like a bat during his workouts.
Together, these accounts offer a glimpse into the King’s distinctive routines—and the everyday banter he shares with Camilla.
