Prince William and Prince Harry are very likely the most famous pair of brothers in the world, with the possible exception of Marvel’s Thor and Loki — I’ll leave it up to Royalists and Harry loyalists to decide which is which.
It may surprise people to know, then, that the duo have a much lesser-known and rarely seen sister — the Hela to their Thor and Loki, you might say. While not exactly a dark family secret banished away by Odin/King Charles, the brothers’ sister doesn’t suffer anywhere near the exposure of Harry and Wills due to her lack of a royal title, so that means her existence as a whole remains unknown to many.
Prince William and Prince Harry’s hidden stepsiblings, explained
The stepsister of the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Sussex is Laura Lopes, the daughter of Queen Camilla from her first marriage to Andrew Parker Bowles. At 46, Laura is older than both of her stepbrothers, who are 41 (William) and 39 (Harry) at the time of writing.
A year after her mother’s own wedding, Lopes married her husband, chartered accountant and former Calvin Klein model Harry Marcus George Lopes, in 2006. Her wedding dress was even designed by Anna Valentine, who designed Camilla’s dress the year before. The Lopes welcomed their first child, a daughter named Eliza, in 2008. Fraternal twin boys, Gus and Louis, followed in 2009.
Born on New Year’s Day 1978, Lopes did not become an official extended member of the Royal family until her mother married the now King in 2005. A graduate of History of Art and Marketing from Oxford Brooke University, Lopes has managed to maintain a career away from the royal public duties that have tied down her stepsiblings. From 2015 to 2023, she managed boutique fashion company Mojo & McCoy.
Want to have your mind blown even further, though? Laura has an older brother. Yes, the princes have another secret sibling. At 49 years old, Tom Parker Bowles is the eldest of the four. As a food writer and critic, Parker Bowles has a vaguely bigger profile than his sister as he is a frequent guest on food and cookery TV shows in the U.K. He, meanwhile, has two children by his ex-wife Sara Buys — Lola, born in 2007, and Frederick, in 2010.
Do Prince William and Prince Harry get along with their stepbrother and stepsister?
So are the foursome one big happy family and we just never knew about it? Well, no, not quite. According to Kate Nicholls’ 2010 book Harry and William, William and Laura, in particular, were often at each others’ throats when they were young, due to the way Charles and Camilla’s affair had broken up the marriages of their respective parents.
“William and Laura used to have terrible fights over who was to blame for their broken homes,” Nicholls alleged. “William would blame Camilla for all the hurt she had caused his mother, which would send Laura into a rage. Laura was not having any of it. She would take a hard line and fire back at William, ‘Your father has ruined my life.’”
As adults, the stepsiblings seem to have a more civil relationship, however. Laura’s daughter Eliza was a bridesmaid at William’s wedding to Kate Middleton in 2011, for example, and they at least put on a show of being chummy (see above) at their parents’ wedding. Still, given that even William and Harry hardly have any communication anymore, we suspect the Windsors and the Parker Bowles lead mostly disconnected lives.
Published: Apr 18, 2024 07:59 am