Queensland man believes his parents are Charles and Camilla

Lorraine

Along with the rest of the English-speaking world, let us now visit the British royal family while the Prince Harry/Meghan Markle wedding is tomorrow. Not only are there stories in the gossip magazines about who Harry's real father is--not Charles, but someone who has been close to Harry most of his life, and especially since Diana died. Former Welsh guard, Mark Dyer, took on many fatherly duties to Harry over the years. Photos of young Harry and Dyer show them together at sporting events; Harry was himself a groomsman in Dyer's wedding. Harry apparently introduced Meghan to Dyer soon after the engagement, and Dyer most definitely will be a guest at the wedding. As for the James Hewitt paternity story about Harry, that has been denied and debunked numerous times. Hewitt wasn't even around when Harry was conceived. We all know that Charles and Diana's marriage was rotten from the start. You never saw pictures of them being touchy-feely, the way Harry and Meghan are.

Personally, I think Dyer and Harry look enough alike to consider that they are connected genetically--beyond their shared red hair--as Harry really doesn't resemble Charles in any way we can see. But whatever the truth, the Crown sees Prince Charles as Harry's legitimate father and heir.  I love that Meghan is divorced and biracial and American and an avowed feminist and has an adorable rescue dog named Guy. Enough of that.

The story that has fascinated me as a first mother much more is that of Simon Charles Dorante-Day, an Australian man who was born in Portsmouth, England (in a hospital that did not normally do births), on April 5, 1966. He was adopted at 18 months by a couple whose parents were servants in one of the House of Windsor households. The adopting couple moved to Australia, and mysteriously had plenty of money. Dorante-Day looks very much like a son of Charles and Camilla; one of his daughters resembles the Queen. Not only does he look like Charles, he also resembles a brother of Camilla--someone who would be his uncle.

In 1966, the year that Dorante-Day was born, Charles, 16, was pulled out of the school in attended in northern Scotland, Gordonstoun, and sent off to a kind of wilderness school in Australia, during which time he visited Papua, New Guinea. According to this part of the story, the headstrong and lively debutante, Camilla Shand, five months older than Charlies, disappeared from view for several months at the time. This fact, at least, was even in an Elle magazine story.

PROTOCOL, PROTOCOL
After having watched The Crown on Netflix all of this seems perfectly fitting. The series emphasized the forces that protocol and prime ministers exerted on Queen Elizabeth to squelch her sister's marriage to a divorced Capt. Peter Townsend in the Fifties. A decade later the Queen, a bit stuffy herself, finds out her eldest son and successor to the throne is having a child and he's only 16! I can imagine the explosion in the palace walls. Shipping Charles to the other side of the world where he could not possibly see Camilla seems like what any royal family might have done. Rich American families were always sending their sons and/or daughters off to tours of Europe or god-knows-where to break up liaisons they did not approve of. In fact, my first husband's very WASPY father offered him a lengthy trip to Europe to forget me, but we secretly married instead.

Prince Charles

Anyhow, there are reports that Charles and Camilla met in the Sixties, but that is scrubbed from official biographies, which state that they met in 1970 or 71, introduced at a polo match or a party. The details vary, which is weird in its own way; one would think that if they truly had not met until XYZ, that would be nailed down. Like you either meet at a party or a polo match for the first time in 1970 or 1971, right? And let us remember the royals are covered like no other family. No mention of a Sixties fling between teenagers. Of course, no social media was around at the time which surely would have recorded them together.

According to a biography by Sally Bedell Smith, Camilla's father pushed her marriage to long-time beau (seven years) while Charles was away in the Royal Navy. Since Camilla was rumored in upper-crust British circles not to be a virgin--apparently required of brides to successors to the throne, Mr. Shand pressured Andrew Parker-Bowles to finally marry his daughter, as it was assumed that she was spoiled goods, and the Crown wouldn't accept her as a match for Charles. Camilla's lack of virginity was gossip fodder at that time, and became part of the story of why she married Parker-Bowles. The royals have always commanded American headlines. I recall my own mother, who was divorced herself, being upset that Princess Margaret was not allowed to marry Capt. Townsend. It was a big story in one of the women's magazines that came into our house.

A true story of adoption,
secrecy and love

THAT LONG LOVE AFFAIR
The lengthy love affair between Prince Charles and Camilla that continued despite their marriages to other people has always smacked of more than just thwarted love. It always reminded me of how my daughter's father and I continued our relationship after our daughter was relinquished beyond any reasonable reason or time. By anybody's lights, we should have stopped seeing each other. But we did not. And I've heard similar connections that go on with other couples who relinquished a child but who never married. 

I've written about this somewhat in my memoir, but didn't really indicate how long this went on. Years. Yes, years. Our daughter had been the emotional glue--the same kind of connection over the years I sense between Camilla and Charles.

Simon Charles Dorante-Day
Ya think he looks like Charles? 

Back to Dorante-Day. Although in England all adopted people are able to get their original birth certificates--how civilized!--and learn the name of their true parents, he says the name on his birth certificate is fictitious, as he can find no trace of such a person. Furthermore, he says that his grandmother--remember she and her husband worked for the royal family--told him repeatedly that he was the child of Camilla and Charles. It all adds up; royal families are known to pass off their illegitimate children to families who worked for them, families they knew could trust to keep their secret.

CAMILLA AVOIDS QUEENSLAND WHERE DORANTE-DAY LIVES
Dorante-Day, who lives in the province of Queensland, has been trying to get a DNA test of prove that he is or is not their offspring--he just wants to find the truth he says--but so far, the palace is a no-go. He was hoping to meet Charles and Camilla both when they came to Australia in April of 2018. At first Camilla was not going to make the trip at all, but in the end she went. Her possibly not coming had already begun to make headlines in Australia, and Dorante-Day was popping up in the stories. Lawyers believed that the laws in Queensland--where Dorante-Day resides--could allow him to force the even the royal couple to take a DNA test--should they be in Queensland. However, Camilla unexpectedly left Australia on a commercial flight the day before the couple was to visit Queensland, and two days before the couple's 13th wedding anniversary, April 9. He flew home, as scheduled, the day after their anniversary. Why not just say you're tired and retreat to your hotel--she is 70--and have a cozy anniversary supper with your husband? The official story was that she was tired. (And thus immediately wanted to get on a plane for a 20-hour flight? Odd, if nothing else.) I'm betting on the fact that they were afraid Dorante-Day would confront them, and again, there would be more headlines and television coverage about his claim--and their refusal to take a DNA test.

His resemblance to Charles is uncanny. Even one of his daughters resembles the younger Queen Mum. He is married to a doctor in public health, who is both of aboriginal and islander descent, and they have nine children.

Harry and Mark Dyer

Royal followers know that Charles and Camilla continued their affair long after it was supposedly over. Charles was certainly a diffident fiance/husband/lover of Diana, and he and Camilla hooked up while he and Diana were married. Their, mmm, lovey-dovey phone calls were hacked by the British press--and published, without denials, just outrage. He let his friends know he married Diana because he needed a virgin bride, and she would do. Even an official biographer said that "without any apparent surge in feeling, he began to think seriously of her [Diana] as a potential bride." Camilla was long married off by then. But according to well-publicized accounts that Diana seems to have, er, leaked herself, on their honeymoon with Diana, he kept a photo of Camilla in his diary, which fell out one day; he wore the gold cufflinks with interlocking Cs that Camilla had given Charles on their honeymoon, which appears to be been a giant bust, a fact that the prince's secretaries we well aware of. At the time of his marriage to Diana, Charles gave Camilla a gold bracelet with the initials GF which stood for their code names for each other, Gladys and Fred.

Sometimes the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. Stories about his father's (Prince Philip) dalliances are well known and were part of The Crown series. A man in Germany claims to be Charles' older sibling, sharing Prince Philip as a father; he was conceived when Prince Philip was in the Navy and stationed in Germany in 1945. Yes, they look alike. And in story I came across, the German man said that Prince Philip provided for him and his mother, and that everybody in the royal family knows about him. 

As long as there has been a royal family, bastards of the king and other royals have been around. In the day of Henry VIII they handled the situation better, and just kept them some in some position at the palace. Dorante-Day isn't asking to be the successor to the throne, nor could he ever be as he is illegitimate; he just wants to know who his parents are.--lorraine
____________________
No, I am not getting up to watch the wedding. Oh yes, a man in Canada also professes to be the son of Prince Charles, also conceived before he married Diana. Birth control, remember, used to be an iffy proposition. One weird note: Dorante-Day was born the very same day as my daughter. In Chinese astrongly, , Fire Horses both.
FYI:  Dorante-Day has a Facebook page.

SOURCES
There are many, here are a few: 

Oz Love Child for Chas and Cam
Royal Aussie  (A video interview with Dornate-Day)

Charles and Camilla's 'secret son': The real reason she pulled out of Aussie Trip
“I am Prince Charles’ brother”: German man’s explosive claims
US report: Prince Harry's 'real dad' revealed

Charles' fury that Camilla secret was out

Meet the Indigenous woman who married into the Royal family

TO READ

An Affair with My Mother: A Story of Adoption, Secrecy and Love
by Caitriona Palmer

5.0 out of 5 starsAwesome. I heard Caitriona on Diane Rehm

July 14, 2016
Such an amazing story. Rules in Ireland were so outlandish. I appreciated the fact that her adopted parents were so supportive and also her husband. Her struggle since age 6, was draining. So glad her half/siblings accepted her. An amazing story. I could so relate, as I have a granddaughter who is adopted.