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Queen Camilla received a special birthday shoutout from the Prince and Princess of Wales. Prince William and Catherine sent Her Majesty a birthday wish on Thursday. "Happy Birthday to Her Majesty! 🎂," the Waleses' X account wrote alongside the Queen's 78th birthday portrait.
The photo, showing Camilla smiling, while resting her arms on a fence at her private home, Ray Mill House, was released on the eve of her birthday. King Charles' wife turned 78 on July 17. An additional of the Queen sitting in a chair with a book was shared on Thursday, with a message that read: "Thank you for the wonderful well wishes on Her Majesty’s 78th birthday today! 🎈."
The bells of Westminster Abbey rang out to celebrate the Queen's birthday on July 17. The King’s Troop Royal Horse Artillery also fired a 41 gun salute in Green Park with the Band of the Scots Guards, while the HAC Regiment fired a 62 gun salute at Tower Wharf.
Camilla, who has two children—Tom Parker Bowles and Laura Lopes—from her first marriage to Andrew Parker Bowles, became Prince William and Prince Harry's stepmother in 2005. According to the BBC, Harry once said that Camilla is "not the wicked stepmother," but instead called her "a wonderful woman and she's made our father very, very happy, which is the most important thing." Harry also shared, "William and I love her to bits."
Following Charles' ascension to the throne in 2022, the King said he could "count on the loving help" of his "darling wife, Camilla," adding, "In recognition of her own loyal public service since our marriage 17 years ago, she becomes my Queen Consort. I know she will bring to the demands of her new role the steadfast devotion to duty on which I have come to rely so much.”
Tom has expressed his pride in his mother. Speaking to PEOPLE in 2024, Her Majesty's son gushed, "I’m incredibly proud of her. She’s at an age when most people think of retiring, but she never complains; she just gets on with it."
