Camilla Parker Bowles

Camilla enters as the woman Charles loves and cannot marry within the rigid protocols of royal life, warm and unpretentious where the palace is cold and exacting. She's witty, grounded, at ease with horses and country pleasures, and utterly devoted to Charles in a way that seems to ask for nothing but honesty.

The show uses her as a study in what the institution refuses to accommodate: an ordinary, funny, unglamorous love. Both actresses play her without self-pity, giving Camilla a dry humor and quiet steadiness that make the era's cruelties toward her feel absurd rather than merely sad.