NEED TO KNOW<\/p>\n
When the future King Charles<\/a> wanted to make the then-Camilla Parker Bowles<\/a> his wife, he relied on a tried-and-tested royal formula: play the long game, and gradually, people will be accustomed to the change.\n<\/p>\n He told courtiers that Camilla was a permanent non-negotiable part of his life, and they set about gradually making her more acceptable to the British people \u2014 firstly by getting a skeptical media, which had been so pro-Princess Diana<\/a>, onside, and then easing her into the public consciousness. It took several years, but the couple was married in 2005<\/a>, eight years after Diana\u2019s sudden death in Paris<\/a>.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n The long game was something that Churchill would have advised, too, especially concerning his onetime friend King Edward VIII.\n<\/p>\n Biographer Andrew Morton<\/a> tells PEOPLE, \u201cChurchill always felt Edward VIII would find what he called a \u2018pretty cat\u2019 and settle down. He never imagined for a living second that he would give up the throne to marry this woman whom, by his own admission, he’d enjoyed only a platonic relationship with.\u201d\n<\/p>\n The then Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles at the Mey Games in Caithness, Scotland in Aug. 2007.<\/p>\n Christopher Furlong\/Getty<\/p>\n \u201cChurchill was more, I would argue, on the laissez-faire side of the royal family. His policy for Edward VIII was just to play for time, to just get through the coronation and gradually introduce the object of your desire to the public in a gradual way through staged photographs,” Morton says.\n<\/p>\n However, the monarch didn\u2019t want to wait to make twice-divorced Wallis Simpson his wife and had to abdicate the throne after 326 days, before he even had a coronation.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n Churchill\u2019s place alongside the royal family is explored in Morton\u2019s new book,\u00a0Winston and the Windsors<\/a>, out Oct. 21.\u00a0Morton \u2014 famous for his Diana: Her True Story, which (with her cooperation) shed light on the late royal’s unhappy marriage \u2014 says the tactic espoused by Churchill for another king was\u00a0\u201cexactly how Prince Charles did it.\u201d\n<\/p>\n He adds, \u201cIn 1992, when Charles and Diana separated, Prime Minister John Major told the House of Commons there were no plans for them to divorce. There was a sense of Diana and Charles arriving at Westminster Abbey in separate coaches on the day of the coronation.”\n<\/p>\n The late Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles at the Braemar Games, Scotland in Sept. 2017.<\/p>\n Samir Hussein\/WireImage<\/p>\n \u201cI think it’s fair to say that Charles learned from the abdication that you don’t push it, you play in the long game,” he says. “Camilla started out as the Duchess of Cornwall. It was going to be queen consort and now it’s Queen, and there hasn’t been rioting in the streets.\u201d\n<\/p>\n Morton adds, \u201cThe point about Churchill is that he was not a moralizer. He didn’t look in the rearview mirror. Once that something had been inside it, he moved on to the next thing.\u201d\n<\/p>\n