“There’s been a lot of speculation about every single girl I’m with, and it actually does quite irritate me after a while, more so because it’s a complete pain for the girls. These poor girls, whom I’ve either just met or are friends of mine, suddenly get thrown into the limelight and their parents get rung up and so on. I think it’s a little unfair on them, really. I’m used to it, because it happens quite a lot now. But it’s very difficult for them and I don’t like that at all.
“If I fancy a girl and she fancies me back, which is rare, I ask her out. But at the same time, I don’t want to put them in an awkward situation, because a lot of people don’t understand what comes with knowing me, for one—and secondly, if they were my girlfriend, the excitement it would probably cause.”
By the end of the summer of 2003, the royal romance was an open secret at St. Andrews, but William and Kate had managed to keep it from the world, maintaining a low profile. The couple moved into Balgove House, a four-bedroom cottage a quarter mile outside town. William installed a champagne fridge; Kate put up gingham curtains.
In the early spring of 2004, the couple went riding in the Middleton Hunt (no relation to Catherine’s family) in North Yorkshire, and William introduced her as his “girlfriend” for the first time. But it wasn’t until a paparazzo from the Sun photographed them skiing at Klosters in Switzerland and published the tabloid headline on April 1, FINALLY…WILLS GETS A GIRL, that people clamored to know everything about the shy, gorgeous brunette.
Naturally, the next question was, When would the prince propose? But William is his own man, and when he feels pressured to do something, he either pushes back or walks away from it.
That summer, it seemed as though the prince went out of his way to show the world that he was unattached. He partied hard at pubs and nightclubs in the company of male friends or his brother, and there were witnesses aplenty who saw him getting drunk and cuddling, groping, or fondling various and sundry girls who later sold their stories to the media.
William’s excessive attempts to hide his genuine romance or appear to redirect public attention from it with a little flirtatious sleight of hand smacks of a Hanoverian ancestor’s conduct 217 years earlier. In 1785 the Prince of Wales (the future George IV) illegally wed a Catholic widow, Maria Fitzherbert. He then behaved like a cad in public, resuming his liaisons with previous mistresses and embarking on affairs with new ones, to discredit any stories that he had married Mrs. Fitzherbert.
Kate, who was heartbroken by William’s behavior, wasn’t so sure that it was just “harmless flirting,” as her mother hastened to assure her. “I believe William loves me and would never do anything to intentionally hurt me,” she told Carole. Yet the Windsor men and the Hanovers before them were notorious womanizers; she feared it was in his genes. “But it’s that family….”
For the third year in a row William wished to return to the Craigs’ wildlife preserve in Kenya, giving rise to speculation that Jecca Craig remained in the romantic picture. The media brouhaha was not fair either to Jecca or to Kate. Ordinarily patient and discreet, Kate lost her customary cool; their arguments over it spilled out-of-doors. According to a mutual friend, Catherine “felt threatened and humiliated. It was one thing to never be publicly acknowledged, but quite another to have someone else bandied about in the press as the woman in his life. She knew that would happen all over again if he went to see Jecca Craig.”
But William is as stubborn as his father, and when it came to women, no one told him what to do. He insisted that he no longer had feelings for Jecca, but Kate reminded him that this wasn’t how it would appear to an outsider or how it would be spun by the media. She ultimately won what the press dubbed “the Battle of the Babes” when Charles and the palace agreed with her point of view. By then the Prince of Wales saw Kate as a daughter-in-law, even if William wasn’t quite there yet.
Every time his raunchily romantic antics made tabloid headlines, William would apologize to Kate with a posh vacation or a cozy retreat with the royals. Yet for every indication that William took their relationship seriously, old flames kept leaping out of the woodwork. He was seen partying with some of them, and flew to Tennessee to visit an American heiress, Anna Sloan. Another of his summer 2004 excursions was an all-male cruise featuring an all-girl crew. “Kate was speechless,” said a friend. “He saw nothing wrong with it, of course. But she was definitely humiliated. It was getting harder and harder for her to read him.”
Journalist Katie Nicholl reported their split that summer, although Clarence House, where Prince Charles lives and works in London, and where princes William and Harry resided at the time, issued a denial. Nonetheless, according to Nicholl, William had been unhappy in the relationship for some time, and felt claustrophobic.
As they entered their senior year at St. Andrews in the autumn of 2004, Catherine and William remained on the outs. Although they still lived together, on Carole Middleton’s advice Kate gave William breathing space and went home to Bucklebury on weekends. By Christmas 2004 they were back together, but she had issued William an ultimatum: If he was serious about their relationship, he was not to contact his heiress pals again—and one in particular: a stunning blond with the tongue-twisting name of Isabella Anstruther-Gough-Calthorpe.
Yet not all of William’s acting out was attributable to a fear of commitment. The release of a second revealing book by Princess Diana’s former press secretary in October 2004 had sent him on a babes-and-booze bender. In the spring of 2005, with final exams looming, his nerves were again sorely tested. The prince wasn’t particularly studious to begin with, and he found himself cramming for his finals while Operation Paget, Scotland Yard’s inquest on Diana’s death, was lobbing one bombshell after another at the royal family, even suggesting that her body might have to be exhumed because of problematic issues with the toxicology report.
According to one of their classmates, “If it wasn’t for Kate, Will would have crumbled with all that was going on. She quizzed him, went over notes with him, just did whatever it took to keep his mind on what was important.” True to form, Kate remained steady and steadfast, keeping him on an even keel. The prince had once told his friend Guy Pelly (now a nightclub impresario), “I can rely on her totally. She is completely there for me. I’ve never had anyone in my life like Kate.”
On June 23, 2005, Kate received her degree in history of art, and William received his in geography. As Vice Chancellor Brian Lang told their graduating class, “You will have made lifelong friends…. You may have met your husband or wife. Our title as the top matchmaking university in Britain signifies so much that is good about St. Andrews, so we rely on you to go forth and multiply….”
The queen, Prince Philip, Prince Charles, and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, attended the graduation ceremony. Her Majesty approved of Catherine, though they were not formally introduced at the time. Her mother was already so revved up about being in the same place with the royal family that Kate took a pass. “She is good for him, I think,” the queen said to Prince Charles. “But where do we go from here?”
Where, indeed? Kate herself seemed kind and pleasant. But the “men in gray,” as Princess Diana had called the palace courtiers, were concerned that the Middletons were not aristocratic enough to be Windsor in-laws, or that some crazy relative would emerge who would embarrass everyone. According to an unnamed courtier, “The Queen was sick of all the scandal and the drama. She wanted a nice, obedient girl from a lovely, hopefully rather boring, family.” In time, Kate’s uncle Gary Goldsmith, who calls his Ibiza residence the “Maison de Bang Bang,” would boast—to Prince William—of his own drug and prostitution connections.
After graduation William and Kate enjoyed a romantic holiday in Kenya. Then the prince began preparing for the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, where he would follow in his brother’s footsteps. Because Harry hadn’t gone to university first, he was already ahead of William. Kate moved to London and submitted her résumé to art galleries. On Jan
uary 8, 2006, William began his military training. Four days earlier, he and Kate had shared their first public kiss, dispelling rumors that their romance was on the rocks. The media took note as well when Kate and her parents attended William’s graduation from Sandhurst that November. ITN hired a lip-reader to discern what Kate was saying to her mother as she watched William march past. The verdict: “I love the uniform. It’s so sexy!”
Two weeks earlier, Catherine had been invited to spend a weekend with the royal family at Sandringham in Norfolk. The Windsors seemed very comfortable with her, and the feeling was mutual. After the disastrous marriages of three of her four children (Anne, Charles, and Andrew), the queen had become a fan of long courtships, and now favored a relationship of at least five years before she approved of the resounding clang of wedding bells. How much had changed in a generation! Charles already considered Kate one of the family, but it took Camilla some time to come around. At first, she found Kate “pretty, but rather dim” and went out of her way to say something snide about her, even as Charles complimented her. Ironically, as she had the least patrician birthright in the room, Camilla felt that the Middletons weren’t blue-blooded enough and that William should marry a girl from an old aristocratic house, meddling in the heir’s affairs the same way she had in Charles’s marriage to Diana.
Mindful of Diana’s trial by fire during her engagement and of the chilly reception the royal family had given her, William was already taking pains to ease Catherine into The Firm. He had even requested that she be advised by family members and palace staffers on how to cope with the barrage of paparazzi and the media scrutiny, as well as how to handle the loneliness and isolation that his mother had endured. But unless Kate was in William’s company, or until they got engaged, she would not be entitled to a protection officer of her own.
And yet she was a princess-in-training with no assurance that William would propose. Purportedly, she was instructed to study footage of Princess Diana for lessons in everything from how to handle the press and work a crowd to gracefully getting in and out of a car without flashing any thigh. A target for every camera, Kate was always perfectly groomed and impeccably dressed when she stepped outside. Well coached, she never spoke to the press, nor posed, but smiled and kept going about her business.
According to Tatler’s Geordie Greig, Kate was “perfect princess material. She is the epitome of an effortlessly stylish English rose. She has qualities you can’t create or manufacture. Her unaffectedness makes her particularly attractive.”
While William had begun to learn the royal ropes, taking brief internships at Chatsworth, HSBC, and the Bank of England, and then embarking on a military career, Catherine had become a dabbler. Although she showed talent as a photographer, instead she enjoyed a brief stint as an accessories buyer, built a Web site for her parents’ business, and curated an art show, as she placed her royal relationship above all else.
Woolworth’s started manufacturing china tchotchkes with the couple’s images and initials on them in 2006. Kate was amused; William not so much. The press had expected he might pop the question on her twenty-fifth birthday, January 9, 2007, mobbing her when she left her London flat. She had hoped he would get down on bended knee on Valentine’s Day, 2007, but William gave her a diamond-encrusted antique compact instead of a ring. A former St. Andrews classmate described Kate as “crushed” by the disappointment.
During those early months of 2007, Catherine and William found themselves at a crossroads. The Middleton mantra was “Grin and bear it,” and Kate had to do a lot of both, because William was visibly pulling away. The relationship began to crumble when William was down in Dorset for a ten-week tank commander’s course at the Royal Army’s training camp in Bovington. The couple was separated by a distance of 130 miles, and William preferred to spend weekends with his fellow officers instead of going up to London to be with Kate. On March 22, 2007, at a nightclub in Bournemouth, he was caught in the flashbulbs with his arm around a pretty eighteen-year-old Brazilian student, Ana Ferreira, who was quite certain that William groped her breast, and she cheerfully told the press about it. Later in the evening the prince steamed up the dance floor with nineteen-year-old Lisa Agar, and then invited her back to his barracks to hang out with him and his friends. When the story hit the tabloids, Kate predictably became infuriated.
William defended himself, insisting, at least to his friends, “I’m not 36 and I’m not married. I’m 24 and just want to have some fun.”
Kate had reached the point where she wanted a commitment but dared not ask for one. In fact, the more she yearned for William to get closer, the farther he pulled away. But instead of facing his insecurity or immaturity, the prince neatly deflected attention onto the perennial adversary, the media, blaming them for the problems in their relationship. “The press will make your life unbearable as long as we’re together,” he told Kate. “I don’t want you suffering the way my mother did.” But in trying to protect Kate, William was wounding her deeply. She reminded him how much they had invested in the relationship and how much they had already shared. According to one of Kate’s friends from Bucklebury, “She told him that he made her happy and that she believed she made him happy, and that was all that mattered in the end.”
But William demurred, insisting that for a man in his position, things weren’t that simple. Now twenty-five, he was under too much pressure to propose. He felt uncomfortable echoes of his mother’s marriage jitters as well as the pressure his father was given by his father to marry Diana because Charles had reached a certain age. William was also determined not to let Fleet Street turn him into a fiancé just because it sold newspapers. Kate assured him that she was in no hurry to settle down, but the truth was, she wanted security.
Citing claustrophobia, over several agonizing phone calls in which he insisted, “I can’t…. It just isn’t going to work. It isn’t fair to you,” he ended their romance on April 11, 2007. News of the royal breakup leaked out three days later.
As soon as Catherine was no longer a royal girlfriend, she and her family seemed fair game for the press. Stories surfaced about some of William’s class-bound friends who would mock Kate’s roots by mimicking a flight attendant’s doors-to-manual command. Then the footage was broadcast of Carole Middleton chewing gum during William’s graduation from Sandhurst (it turned out to be nicotine gum to help her kick a thirty-year smoking habit). It suddenly became news that in the presence of the queen she used the words “toilet” (instead of “lavatory”) and “pardon?” (rather than “what?”)—perhaps “pardon” is what the royal family does to traitors. The stories turned out to be spurious inventions; Mrs. Middleton and HRM had never been introduced. But the media wondered whether the ambitious, enterprising, social-climbing Carole was too common to be William’s mother-in-law and had damaged her daughter’s chances of becoming a princess.
Not wishing to lose the goodwill of her middle-class subjects, the queen was quick to ensure that Kate didn’t think the criticism came from her. “What rubbish. I have absolutely nothing against gum. I chew gum!” she exclaimed when she read the headlines. And William phoned Kate to assure her that none of his family or friends had spoken to the press about the Middletons.
William and Kate spent the next ten weeks partying separately, if frantically, as if to show the other that they could get on well enough alone. A few nights after their breakup, William racked up a bar tab of more than $17,000 with his friends at Mahiki, one of his favorite watering holes. While the Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” blasted through the speakers, he raised his arms high above his head and shouted, “I’m freeee!”
Meanwhile, Kate stepped out in a miniskirt, as if to remind William what he was missing. She flirted up a storm on the same dance floors they had frequented together, and William’s once-snooty friends rallied around her.
But by July 1, and the concert to commemorate the tenth anniversary of his mother’s death, the couple was covertly reunit
ed, having made tentative steps to rekindle their romance since the end of May. They sat separately at the concert, but at the after party, as they danced to the Bodyrockers’ “I Like the Way (You Move)” (which they’d always called “their” song), guests noted that the couple was practically making out on the dance floor.
“I’m glad to hear it. She’s a nice girl,” the queen told her grandson when William informed her that he and Kate had reconciled. Nevertheless, an engagement announcement remained forthcoming.
But that August, during a romantic holiday in the Seychelles, William made Kate a promise. As one of their friends later divulged, “They didn’t agree to get married there and then; what they made was a pact. William told Kate she was the one, but he was not ready to get married. He promised her his commitment and said he would not let her down, and she in turn agreed to wait for him.”
The prince needed to be certain Catherine fully understood that his royal duty would always come first, and what it would mean to marry him—what came with the job on her end as well as his. First of all, he would be committing the next few years to training with the RAF, and if Kate thought that being a royal girlfriend was difficult, being the sweetheart of a serviceman was even harder.
On January 7, 2008, William arrived at RAF Cranwell in Lincolnshire, the oldest air force college in the world. This time he made a concerted effort to return to London on weekends. Kate would be waiting for him at Clarence House, having been cheerfully waved in like a member of the family, according to journalist and royal biographer Katie Nicholl. Kate would have a hot bath and a home-cooked meal waiting for her weary pilot-in-training. “She was almost motherly to him,” a mutual friend recalled. The couple enjoyed puttering about the kitchen, just like the old days at St. Andrews. Friends observed their natural, easy intimacy and their cozy domesticity. William could (and did) finish Kate’s sentences; she could read his body language and the look in his eyes, a keen judge of when he wanted to continue the party or kick the guests out.
Royal Romances: Titillating Tales of Passion and Power in the Palaces of Europe Page 50