by Dylan Howard
***
Many have speculated on why the couple split in 2007. Some blame Carole Middleton’s apparent interference in the relationship, urging a commitment from William. Others, such as royal biographer Christopher Anderson, laid the blame more in the direction of the Royals themselves and, specifically, Camilla. Speaking to the Daily Beast some years later, he explained his theory: “Camilla is a bit of a snob. She never really felt that Kate Middleton as an individual and the Middleton family as a whole were going to be worthy of entering into the Royal Family. I was told at the time of the breakup, and later on as well, that Camilla basically whispered in Charles’s ear that it was really time to make—to force—William to make a decision one way or the other. She was the instigator of this.”
Whoever was behind the split, at face value, it was clearly a stalemate between the two youngsters that was the primary cause. It’s still unclear whether William was indeed disinclined to commit and Kate, frustrated, simply had had enough, or whether their respective families had weighed in and urged a resolution. What is evident is that Kate and William knew that a commitment meant a wedding and the unique role of King and Queen. Having seen the chaos and heartbreak a hasty decision to wed had caused his parents, the Prince was clearly in no way going to repeat that mistake.
In the first decade of the twentieth century and ten years after the paparazzi had hounded William’s mother to her death, it was completely unrealistic to expect Kate—who had been continually harangued by the press—to fall in line and meekly behave with subservience and obedience to the Royal Family and the country while William’s girlfriend. William’s larking around while off duty from military training was oafish, but Kate knew she had to be sure what she was taking on.
A “close friend” of the couple told The Sun soon after the split, “As far as Kate is concerned, William simply hasn’t been paying her enough attention. Kate feels hugely frustrated that their relationship just seems to be going backwards at a rate of knots.”
William hadn’t had much in the way of significant relationships before Kate, unlike Harry, who had had at least two serious long-term girlfriends before he met Meghan. But while William and Kate were apart, he in Dorset and she in London, William wanted to break loose and act like a frat boy in heat, noted one aide. Kate retreated to her parents’ house, sought refuge with family and friends, and then behaved in a most un-Kate manner. She got out her sauciest pairs of heels and her most glamorous outfits and strutted her funky stuff around town.
“Actually, it [the breakup] made me a stronger person,” Kate admitted some years later. “I really valued that time for me, although I didn’t think it at the time!”
The separation proved something else to William, aside from his unexpected jealousy at seeing Kate having fun. He realized what a rock she had been to him, over the seven years they had known each other. From being there for him when he was agonizing over whether to stay at St Andrews, to patiently accepting the hounding from the press. From coping with the fact he would one day be King, to putting up with being forever a consort. Kate’s discretion, immaculate comportment, and polite, equable temperament had won her many supporters within the Firm. Never once had Kate confided in anyone outside her family about her relationship, far less even consider selling her story. This sensible and grounded girl was clearly a potential huge asset for the Royals, as they faced the closing decades of the Queen’s reign.
Kate wasn’t such a soft touch that William could expect her to come running at his merest whim. No, this Prince would have to work to get his lady back. To fill in the time and take her mind off things, Kate signed up for a charity challenge with an all-female dragon boat racing crew called the Sisterhood, who billed themselves as “an elite group of female athletes, talented in many ways, toned to perfection with killer looks, on a mission to keep boldly going where no girl has gone before.” The twenty-one girls taking part in the venture were aiming to row across the English Channel to raise money for children’s hospices. The team trained on the River Thames from 6:30 each morning. Fellow rower Emma Sayle told the Daily Mail about their teammate: “I think the training became her therapy. Kate had always put William first and she said this was a chance to do something for herself. It wasn’t a case of oh, she’s Kate Middleton so she makes the team. She had to prove herself.” Emma Sayle, incidentally, was the founder of Killing Kittens, a sex party in London, and a director of operations at the Fever swinger parties. Kate’s horizons were certainly broadening beyond pizza and DVD nights in with William.
If that didn’t make William quake in his immaculate Army boots, then the news that Pippa had just finished university and moved into Kate’s Chelsea flat would have made him spill his bedtime cocoa in horror. Kate’s party-loving, gregarious younger sister would be leading Kate into all sorts of diversions and activities that certainly wouldn’t involve sitting around at home in PJs, misery-eating ice cream, and watching Bridget Jones’s Diary. No, together, the pair was tanned, toned, and up for trouble. William was shaken to see tabloid pictures of his once-demure ex-girlfriend’s bronzed limbs and sexily tousled brunette hair, emerging from—and later sliding into—taxis outside London’s most exclusive hot spots and nightclubs.
William had rather expected Kate to pine for him, waiting patiently for him to call. Kate was made of sterner stuff, though. If William thought he was the only one who would be out having fun in clubs, he had another thing coming. Seeing Kate in the papers, looking like she was having a wild old time, flirting with handsome men, and dancing the night away, William was said to be piqued. This wasn’t what was meant to happen.
William realized he had to move fast and man up. Kate had gone to Ibiza for some sun and fun with her brother, James, and friends. They stayed at the villa of Kate’s uncle Gary, where Gary’s wife noticed that Kate spent a lot of time on the phone, reassuring a frantic William that no, she wasn’t dancing on podiums all night at legendary nightclub Pacha’s infamous foam parties. William was fast coming to terms that in breaking up with Kate, he had lost a very special woman. Now, there was no doubt she was the one. Even when dumped, she had firmly refused to talk to anyone outside her family about William—yet another profound example of just how well suited the calm and dignified Kate was to the notoriously private Royals.
Pals said he felt the bust-up was “a terrible mistake.” “She’s not about to wait much longer—and he knows it,” a friend confided.
Over the summer of 2007, Kate had enhanced her reputation to the extent that with or without William at her side, she had become a hot catch on the society A-list. Feted for her discreet sense of style and panache, liked by everyone for her down-to-earth natural charm and giggly humor. She was at countless posh garden parties, making the scene at lavish dinners and receptions and frequently making the society gossip columns as she navigated her way through the upper echelons of London society.
Kate knew that if they were to reconcile, this would have to be a journey that led down the aisle. And then, she had to be sure that she could handle everything that lay beyond that aisle, as did William.
He and Kate met and began discussing their future. They realized what they had was special and, crucially, a strong enough foundation to build a successful partnership.
“She told William she wanted a commitment,” a royal source said at the time. “Either he agrees to wed by next summer or she’s leaving him to get on with her life.”
At a fancy-dress party on June 9, with William done up in hot pants, vest, and a policeman’s helmet, and Kate going as a “naughty nurse,” the pair was seen back together again for the first time since April.
“We were both very young,” William later said of the split, to ITN. “It was very much trying to find our own way and we were growing up.”
One month later, Princes William and Harry walked onto the stage at Wembley Stadium in front of 63,000 people, where they were hosting a concert to celebrate what would have been their mother’s forty-sixth
birthday and marking a decade since her death. In the royal box, Harry was accompanied by his partner, Chelsy Davy, and William sat next to his best friend, Thomas van Straubenzee. But Kate was present, discreetly sitting a few rows behind William, accompanied by her brother, James, and clearly happy to be there.
After a spectacular concert, featuring a host of celebrities, musicians, and statesmen, there was an extravagant party at a London nightclub, where tropical fish swam beneath a Perspex dance floor, oysters and raspberry vodka jelly shots were downed, and dancers in cages leapt and boogied. Harry was with Chelsy, while Kate and William dominated the dance floor, before sneaking off into a corner to sip cocktails, canoodle, snuggle, and snog the night away.
A few weeks later, they were together again. At Camilla’s sixtieth birthday party at Highgrove, a black-tie event for which Kate was smuggled in to avoid the paparazzi, she shimmered in a cream-colored dress and smiled patiently and even put up with William asking the orchestra to play “It Had To Be You” and goofily mouthing the words to her, in front of everyone.
That September, they flew to the Seychelles in the Indian Ocean. Finally, they had time alone, to gaze into the beautiful sunsets and dream of their future together. They stayed at the Desroches Island Resort, checking in under the names “Martin and Rosemary Middleton,” where they spent their days kayaking and snorkeling in the shallow coral reef. At night, over candlelight, they discussed their relationship and made a deal with each other.
As William and Kate returned from the reconciliatory break in Desroches, the tenth anniversary of Diana’s death came around. Tactfully, Kate left William space in which to mark the difficult period. Some months later, the paparazzi got their shot when the couple partied all night long at Boujis nightclub, tumbling happily out of the doors at a spectacularly early hour and zooming off into the hazy dawn. The message to William’s family, friends, and the wider world was clear: the couple was back and, by all appearances, even tighter than ever.
The following April, Kate was firmly back in the Firm when she was photographed at William’s graduation from Royal Air Force College Cranwell. Accompanying William’s aunt, Lady Sarah McCorquodale, she watched William graduate in a ceremony presided over by none other than his father. Flying Officer William Wales was presented with his wings and then attended a drinks reception with his dad and stepmother—with Kate very present at his side.
In May, Kate made another huge leap further along her path toward the royals inner sanctum, when she represented William at the wedding of his cousin Peter Phillips (for whose bachelor party William had cheekily appropriated that lift in the Chinook helicopter). William was off in Kenya at the wedding of his old friend Batian Craig, brother of Jecca. Kate, meanwhile, joined fellow royal girlfriend Chelsy Davy at St George’s Chapel in Windsor, in the presence of the Queen, to celebrate the Phillips’s marriage (which ended in divorce in 2020).
At the wedding, Kate’s relaxed demeanor as she chatted and laughed with Chelsy and joined her and Harry on the dance floor added fuel to the fire. Rumors and speculation about Royal nuptials continued to accumulate. The press, who had come to cover the wedding, couldn’t believe their luck at scoring a double scoop. Here was Harry presenting his girlfriend to the Queen for the first time. Nerve-rackingly, Kate was making her debut solo appearance at a royal function without William at her side.
“[William] sent out a message,” wrote the Daily Mail’s Richard Kay, quoted in Vanity Fair. “[He’s saying,] ‘I’m not there, but this girl is very important in my life. She’s representing me. Read what you like into that.’ And, so, one tends to read into that, well, the girl is almost in the homestretch to be his wife.”
The event was also notable for being the high point of Kate and Chelsy’s rather muted relationship. According to royal biographer Katie Nicholl, prior to the Phillips wedding the pair had never quite clicked.
“[Kate]’s friendship with Chelsy was lukewarm,” wrote Nicholls. “They were completely different characters and the bubbly Zimbabwean got along better with Pippa. Kate had made an effort to befriend Chelsy, inviting her clothes shopping, but Chelsy had turned the offer down, leading to a coolness between them.”
The wedding heralded yet another first—this one, a less happy one, for certain guests. It emerged that the wedding couple had sold the picture rights to the wedding for £500,000 to Hello! magazine. This was the first time in history a Royal had sold the media rights to such an occasion, and the Queen was not pleased at all—especially when it transpired that Peter Phillips had discussed the proposal with his mother, Princess Anne, but had not gained his granny’s all-important approval. Informal shots of the Royals letting their hair down at the party and reception made their way into the magazine’s copious coverage of the event, including shots of the monarch herself. When she learned of this, ice formed on the upper slopes of Queen Elizabeth II. Such tawdry monetization of her family’s name and unashamed hunger for publicity and self-promotion went against everything she stood for. The Queen let it go for now, making her displeasure known, and assured that henceforth surely none of her grandchildren would exploit their position and heritage in such a similarly tacky manner.
In June 2008, William had joined the Navy for training. Aware of his renewed commitment to Kate, he now dutifully made the two-hundred-mile trip to see her at every chance, making up for his previous, neglectful ways.
That same month, the Queen bestowed the most distinguished honor it was within her gift to give—she appointed the twenty-six-year-old Prince William as Royal Knight of the Garter. At the formal investiture ceremony, disaster struck when Harry and Kate, in front of all the senior Royals, were hit with an attack of the giggles. “Oh my God!” squeaked Kate, as William sailed regally by, trying to muster up as much dignity as was possible while crowned with a gigantic bunch of ostrich feathers and wearing a velvet cape over his shoulders. Harry, his face as red as his hair, snorted and coughed, trying to contain his laughter. It was Kate’s first formal royal event in front of all the family—and she had collapsed into laughter.
As Kate’s slow but steady progress into the heart of the Royal Family continued, it was now a given that a wedding of their own wasn’t far off. Yet the couple continued to move slowly, adjusting their lives step by cautious step. There could’ve been no greater contrast to the courtship of William’s parents.
WILL AND KATE GET HITCHED
On Friday, April 29, 2011 at 11 a.m., HRH Prince William of Wales and Miss Catherine Middleton were married in Westminster Abbey, central London, just a shade under a decade since they had first bumped into each other one September morning back at St Andrews in 2001.
The wedding had come at a time when the Royal Family was feeling optimistic and upbeat about the future. With William’s nuptials, the second in line to the throne had found his future Queen. The following year, the current Queen would celebrate her Diamond Jubilee, having survived sixty years in the hot seat. For her, it was an especially heartwarming moment, after the disaster of her eldest son’s marriage, to see her quietly determined grandson finally make an honest woman of the lady who would clearly be such an asset in taking the Royal Family into a new era.
To the country at large, there were strange parallels with that day almost exactly thirty years before, when William’s father had married Diana, in the same place, with pretty much the same level of media hysteria. Back in 1981, the emphasis was on the impossibly romantic fairy tale that had seemingly brought the handsome Prince and his blushing bride so swiftly to the altar and the inevitable long life they would enjoy together, ending up as King and Queen. At the time of William and Kate’s wedding, Britain was once again in the grip of an economic recession, the government was wildly unpopular, poverty and crime were on the rise, and in general, there seemed little to celebrate.
But a royal wedding can always unite Britain, even a miserable, broke, penny-pinching, austerity-ridden Britain. And so, on that bright spring morning, everyone came toge
ther to celebrate, from flag-waving grannies to cynical young Republicans.
This being Britain, the celebrations had actually begun well in advance, causing not a few sleepless nights for certain people. “They were singing and cheering [outside] all night long, so the excitement of that, the nervousness of me and with everyone singing—I only actually slept for about half an hour,” William recalled, of the night before the big day.
The lack of sleep didn’t help with his nerves. After arriving at the Abbey, William had a moment’s blind panic, and Harry had to settle his older brother down. “Before Kate arrived, William went to compose himself with Harry in a room just off Poet’s Corner [an area in Westminster Abbey],” wedding guest and former royal editor Duncan Larcombe told Elle magazine. “We were sat near there, so they both walked straight past us and William looked absolutely terrified. They came out afterwards and gave a deep breath.”
Meanwhile, Kate had had her fair share of prewedding jitters, too. Everyone was on tenterhooks to know about her wedding dress, which was to be a surprise on the day. But months before the wedding, the details were somehow leaked to the public. According to biographer Katie Nicholl, Kate freaked when the press revealed Alexander McQueen designer Sarah Burton was making her wedding dress. Burton had previously designed a stunning red dress worn by Michelle Obama, but Kate’s interest was actually piqued by an off-the-shoulder wedding dress for Sara Buys, a fashion journalist, who married Tom Parker Bowles, son of Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, in 2005.
“Behind the scenes, I think that caused tears at the Palace because Kate had done everything she could to keep the wedding dress a secret,” said Nicholl. “Subsequently, a fashion source said that the dress will be a combination of Middleton’s own design ideas, and Burton’s deep knowledge and understanding of high fashion.”