Christmas comes to everyone the same way—with the same deadline, the same expectations, the same quiet dread if you suspect you’ll spend it alone. Queen Camilla is experiencing that dread this December. For the first time since becoming Queen, both of her adult children have decided they won’t be at Sandringham for the holiday.
Tom Parker Bowles and Laura Lopes, both accomplished professionals in their late 40s, have made their choice, and it speaks to something rarely discussed in palace walls: even royal privilege can’t guarantee your children will show up for Christmas.
The Schedule That Changed Everything
It started as a practical arrangement. Tom, a 50-year-old food critic and cookbook author, explained this week that he and his sister operate under an “every other year, one year on, one year off” rotation with their mother.
It sounds like the kind of compromise divorced parents negotiate in family court—which makes sense, because despite Camilla’s current position as Queen, her children grew up with split holidays and the logistics of a blended family.
Why Last Year Was Different
Last December, both siblings showed up. Camilla made an unusually personal plea. According to Tom, his mother said, “I’d love you to come, I haven’t had Christmas with you for a long time.” Those words carried weight because they came at precisely the moment when the royal family was gripped by genuine fear.
King Charles was navigating cancer treatment. Queen Camilla was battling pneumonia. Both were recovering from what Tom would later describe as a brutal stretch.
Two Years That Shook Everything
Tom opened up to The Telegraph about what that period felt like. “It has been a hell of a two years for them,” he said, referring to his mother and stepfather’s health crises. King Charles’ cancer diagnosis, announced in February 2024, rippled through the entire family.
Queen Camilla’s pneumonia—initially reported as a chest infection in early November 2024—forced her to cancel engagements and retreat from public life.
The Conversation That Happens When You Get Older
That’s when Tom had a realization he felt compelled to share. “The older you get, the more conscious you become of mortality, especially with illnesses and the rest of it,” he told The Telegraph. If you’re in your 50s watching your parents age, if you’ve just lived through a year of health scares in people you love, that observation hits differently.
Tom decided to go to Sandringham last Christmas. For the first time in fifteen years, he skipped his usual arrangements.
The Man Who Chooses His Ex-Wife’s Sofa
But 2025 is an “off” year in the rotation, and Tom’s not pretending otherwise. When asked where he’d actually spend Christmas, he gave an answer that would make any PR person wince. “It’s back to the sofa at my ex-wife’s,” he said matter-of-factly. Tom shares two children—Lola, 18, and Freddy, 15—with Sara Buys, whom he separated from in 2018 after thirteen years of marriage.
Despite the divorce, the co-parenting arrangement appears to work well enough that a London living room sofa feels like the right place to be when Christmas arrives.
The Co-Parenting Reality
For fifteen straight Christmases before 2024, Tom had spent the holiday in his ex-wife’s home. It wasn’t a hardship posting—it was where his kids were, where the traditions they’d built as a family actually happened.
The choice to sleep on a sofa rather than stay in a royal residence reveals something about modern family life that the monarchy typically keeps hidden: sometimes the people we love and the obligations we carry don’t align neatly. Sometimes you pick the couch because it matters more.
What Makes Laura’s Absence Hit Differently
While Tom’s Christmas plans made headlines because he talked about them openly, his sister Laura Lopes’ decision carries its own weight. The 47-year-old art curator has three children of her own—Eliza, plus twins Gus and Louis—and family commitments that apparently take precedence over her time at Sandringham.
Neither sibling is giving lengthy explanations. They’re simply following a rotation they’ve established, one that feels reasonable to both of them.
The Royal Christmas That Will Still Happen
King Charles and Queen Camilla will proceed with the traditional Sandringham Christmas regardless of who’s missing from around the dining table. The routine is ornate and precise: the formal church service at St. Mary Magdalene in the morning, the German-style gift exchange in the afternoon, the photographs on the steps.
The machinery of the royal Christmas will function. But there will be empty chairs, and everyone will notice.
A Blended Family That Stayed Blended
Here’s what makes this story more complicated than headlines suggest: Tom and Laura don’t just tolerate their complex family structure—they’ve actively maintained it into adulthood. According to Tom, Camilla still gathers with both her children and her ex-husband, Andrew Parker Bowles, around December 27 every year to celebrate together as a blended family.
They chose to keep their relationship intact rather than cleave along the lines divorce typically demands. For a royal family not known for such transparency or flexibility, it’s quietly radical.
When Your Godfather Is the King
There’s a particular layer of complexity to Tom’s decision: King Charles is his godfather. They’ve had a relationship since Tom’s childhood, with Charles formally taking on the role at his birth. Yet the rotation stands. The godson skips Christmas while his godfather, who is battling cancer, remains at the estate.
It’s actually more revealing than it appears: it suggests that Tom and Charles have a relationship secure enough to survive the occasional missed holiday, that godparenthood doesn’t override actual parenting.
The Health Backdrop That Reframes Everything
The context for this year’s absence is notably different from last year’s crisis. On December 12, 2025, King Charles revealed in a pre-recorded message that his cancer treatment would be “reduced” in the coming year, thanks to what doctors described as an “exceptional” response.
Buckingham Palace explained that he’s moving from active treatment into a “precautionary phase”—ongoing monitoring without the intensive schedule that defined 2024.
Camilla’s Quiet Recovery
Queen Camilla’s pneumonia, initially reported as a chest infection in early November 2024, has resolved; however, she has continued to experience lingering fatigue well into December. By mid-December 2025, she had resumed most of her public duties but remained visibly tired at events.
The pneumonia marked an unusually serious health scare—severe enough to step back from royal work temporarily, but she’s rebounded.
The Monarchy Problem Nobody Talks About
What Tom Parker Bowles inadvertently revealed this week is that the royal family operates under the same family dynamics as everyone else—just with better real estate and more cameras.
Divorced parents negotiate with their adult children about holiday schedules. Adult children prioritize their own families. Grandparents sometimes feel the sting of that prioritization. The Crown doesn’t alter these equations; it simply makes them more visible when they emerge.
A Rotation That Actually Makes Sense
The “every other year” arrangement both siblings described sounds like the kind of compromise that evolves naturally when people actually try to make blended families work. It acknowledges that Tom and Laura have their own lives, their own children, their own holiday traditions that existed before Camilla became Queen and presumably will outlast her reign.
It’s sustainable. It’s honest. It’s also quietly devastating for the parent watching her children choose elsewhere.
The December 27 Gathering Still Happens
Even though December 25 will be without Tom and Laura, Camilla’s post-Christmas tradition carries on. It’s a ritual that speaks volumes about what Camilla chose to preserve after her divorce. She didn’t sever those ties.
She folded them into her life. Andrew isn’t a scandal or a whispered footnote—he’s part of her family’s actual functioning Christmas.
What It Means to Miss Your Children
By Christmas Day 2025, Queen Camilla will join millions of other parents navigating the particular loneliness of an empty chair at the holiday table. She’ll be in a 350-room royal estate surrounded by staff, security, and extended family, but the absence she feels will be private and profound.
Tom will be on a sofa in London. Laura will be wherever her own family calls home. The rotation will have done its job: it will have prioritized everyone’s competing needs, and no one will be entirely satisfied.
Looking Forward When Time Runs Out
If the rotation holds, 2026 should bring Tom and Laura back to Sandringham. By then, King Charles will have completed his transition to precautionary-phase monitoring, and Queen Camilla will have reclaimed her full energy. Time will have moved them all forward.
For now, in December 2025, they’re all learning what it means to live in a family where tradition bends to reality, where even Queens don’t always get their children for Christmas, and where the people we love sometimes have to choose a sofa over a crown. It’s not the royal story anyone expected to tell, but it might be the truest one.
Sources:
Queen Camilla’s Children Will Be Skipping Royal Christmas at Sandringham | Vanity Fair
Queen Camilla Hosts Kids to Decorate Her Home for Christmas | People
Real reason Queen Camilla’s children won’t see royals at Christmas | Express
King Charles shares good news that his cancer treatment will reduce in New Year | BBC
UK’s Queen Camilla suffering from chest infection | Reuters
Tom Parker Bowles reveals the alternative career King Charles suggested | Hello Magazine