All about King Charles' children, and stepchildren

The children of King Charles III and Princess Diana have made a number of splashy headlines, just like their parents.

Prince William and Prince Harry are now both married and have children, but the two (sometimes called "the heir and the spare") have chosen different paths on their royal journey.

Prince William

Prince William, first in the line of succession to the throne, was born on June 21, 1982.

He made a number of unprecedented trips with his parents as a child (previously, royals left children at home when they traveled), and he stayed in the public eye throughout much of his life.

He attended Eton College, a prestigious boarding school, and continued on to the University of St. Andrews, where he met his now-wife, Kate Middleton.

The pair married on April 29, 2011 at Westminster Abbey, becoming the Duke and Dutchess of Cambridge. Then, when Queen Elizabeth died in September 2022, they became the Prince and Princess of Wales and the Duke and Dutchess of Cornwall and Cambridge.

Currently, they are raising three children: Prince George (born July 22, 2013), Princess Charlotte (born May 2, 2015) and Prince Louis (born April 23, 2018).

Prince Harry

Prince Harry, the second child of King Charles and Princess Diana, was born on Sept. 15, 1984.

Harry was 12 years old when his mother died in a fatal car crash in 1997, and the event had a devastating effect on him.

Following in his brother's footsteps, Harry attended Eton College; unlike his brother, he gained a reputation as a "bad boy." But shortly after Eton, he turned over a new leaf in the public perception of him.

Harry served a 10-week tour of duty in Afghanistan and began supporting causes similar to those that his mother championed.

He met his now-wife, Meghan Markle, in 2016 and proposed to her the following year. They married on May 19, 2018, becoming the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.

Their first child, Archie, was born on May 6, 2019, just days before their first wedding anniversary. Lilibet followed two years later on June 4, 2021.

Harry and Meghan decided to "step back" from their royal duties in January 2020, which caused some ripples in the monarchy. The pair remain the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, but they no longer work on behalf of the royal family.

King Charles' stepchildren

King Charles also has two stepchildren, the children of Queen Consort Camilla Parker-Bowles. When Charles and Camilla married in 2005, their blended family became part of royal history. Camilla has two children with ex-husband Andrew Parker Bowles.

Camilla's children are not in the line of succession and do not have any royal titles. “We’re commoners,” Tom Parker Bowles said to an interviewer for A Current Affair in 2015.

Tom Parker Bowles

In 1974, Camilla and her then-husband, Andrew, welcomed their first child, Tom Parker Bowles. Charles is both Tom’s godfather and stepfather, per Tina Brown’s “The Palace Papers.”

Tom Parker Bowles is an award-winning food writer who has written several cookbooks, including 2012’s “Let’s Eat: Recipes from My Kitchen Notebook” and 2021’s “Fortnum & Mason: Time for Tea.”

The New York Times once described Parker Bowles’ food writing: “His sense of humor is intact throughout and never sharper than when he’s writing about himself, whom he portrays as a callow Englishman with a crush on America and a tourist’s eagerness to fit in by speaking the lingo.”

He has a son, Freddy, and a daughter, Lola, according to the media outlet Tatler.

Ahead of King Charles' coronation, Tom Parker Bowles defended his mother on the News Agents podcast.

“I don’t care what anyone says, this wasn’t any sort of endgame. She married the person she loved and this is what happened,” he said.

Laura Lopes

Laura Lopes is Camilla and Andrew’s second child, born in 1978.

In 2006, Lopes married her husband, Harry Lopes, a former Calvin Klein model and accountant. Wedding guests included King Charles III and the former Kate Middleton.

Lopes has three children, a daughter named Eliza and twin sons Gus and Louis, according to the media outlet Tatler.

This article was originally published on TODAY.com