The Australian man who believes he is the illegitimate love child of King Charles III and Queen Camilla has made an astonishing challenge to the royals before they embark on their royal tour of the region.
Their Majesties are set to land in Sydney on Friday to set off on a nine-day tour of Australia and Samoa — where the King will attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting between October 21 and 26.
But before King Charles III even packed his bag, the Australian man who claims to be his “secret son” challenged the 75-year-old ruler to take a paternity test to prove his claims.
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British-born Simon Charles Dorante-Day, 58, has made headlines around the world over unproven claims he is the illegitimate love child of Charles and Camilla.
Mr Dorante-Day was born on April 5, 1966, in Portsmouth, England, and was adopted at eight months old. He has long claimed that his adoptive grandmother, who worked for the late Queen Elizabeth II, told him on her deathbed that he was Charles and Camilla’s son.
The 58-year-old, who lives in Queensland, claims that in the nine months leading to his birth, a then-17-year-old Charles was sent to Australia to study and Camilla, age 18, disappeared from the public eye.
A month ahead of the King and Queen touching down in Australia, Mr Dorante-Day shared a post to Facebook in which he challenged the royals to a “four-way paternity test”.
He shared an image of the King and his two sons, Princes William and Harry, and himself pointing to the lack of “consistency” between the princes’ facial features and their fathers, unlike his “identical” features.
“The fact that the left side of my face identically matches Charles whilst neither William nor Harry’s does, raises the obvious question, just who are Charles’s real sons?” Mr Dorante-Day wrote.
He said a paternity test was the “only way to resolve this issue once and for all”.
The Nightly does not suggest there is any truth behind his claims.
Indeed, there is no evidence his adopted grandmother ever worked for the royal family (all royal workers receive an award for their service, her records do not exist). Also, photos of Camilla at social events in 1965 show no signs of pregnancy.
Charles and Camilla are widely reported to have first met at a polo match in Windsor Great Park in 1970. Mr Dorante-Day has refuted these claims, saying there are varying reports of their ages when they met.
In the lead-up to the royal tour — the very first by a reigning monarch since 2011 — Mr Dorante-Day has re-shared a lengthy interview he did with Seven News in 2023 on his plight to prove he is the son of the King. It is one of many media appearances he has made explaining why he believes he is the monarch’s eldest son.
He has also said his nine children share similar features to the children of Prince William and Kate.
Mr Dorante-Day has said he is committed to pursuing legal action in an attempt to force the King into performing a paternity test. He says the attempts to “stop” his efforts “only strengthen [his] argument” and resolve to continue.
He claims that when he was born, Camilla kept him until he was eight months old hiding him with the help of the royal family and authorities. He says to have been told his name Simon Charles was kept as a condition of his adoption.
He also referred to the late Queen Elizabeth II as his “grandmother” at the time of her death.