AceShowbiz -

Prince Charles' wife Camilla opens up for the first time about the hard time she faced after their relationship was made public. In an interview with The Mail on Sunday's You magazine, the Duchess of Cornwall reveals she felt like a prisoner in her own home due to the intense press scrutiny.

"I couldn't really go anywhere. But the children came and went as normal - they just got on with it, and so did great friends," she recalls. She continues, "It was horrid. It was a deeply unpleasant time and I wouldn't want to put my worst enemy through it. I couldn't have survived it without my family."

The 68-year-old goes on sharing, "I thought, 'Well, if I'm stuck here I might as well do something positive like read all the books I want to read, and try to learn to paint'-though that wasn't a huge success! And after a while, life sort of went on."

Her relationship with Prince Charles was revealed in the early 1990s, when he was still married to Princess Diana. Camilla was also still married to her first husband Andrew Parker-Bowles. Diana, meanwhile, reportedly cheated on Charles with James Hewitt.

Camilla and Charles eventually got married in 2005. On how she keeps herself sane on the royal circuit, she dishes, "You also have to laugh at yourself because if you can't, you may as well give up. I sometimes think to myself, 'Who is this woman? It can't possibly be me.' And that's really how you survive."