As royal expert Katie Nicholl stated, Prince William didn’t like when his school was too far away from home. “I don’t think I was homesick; I was more daunted,” William said, as Nicholl suggested.
“My father was very understanding about it and realized I had the same problem as he probably had. We chatted a lot, and in the end we both realized—I definitely realized—that I had to come back.”
Meanwhile, he met with Kate Middleton, who was a shy and quiet girl in the school, as Nicholl stated.
“Often Kate would go running before breakfast and arrive at the dining hall just before breakfast was over,” royal expert said.
“Within weeks William was bold enough to invite her to join him. Every morning he and his friends sat in the same place, next to the head table, where a crimson throne and 18 seats were reserved for the wardens and deans. The impressive ground-floor dining hall was decorated with heavy oil paintings of philosophers from the Scottish Enlightenment and beautiful stained-glass windows, and there was always a cooked breakfast available. Health-conscious like his father, William would choose muesli and fruit, as did Kate.”
Middleton was with another person when she first met William. “It was clear to us that William was smitten with Kate,” Nicholl said.
“He actually told her she was a knockout that night, which caused her to blush. There was definitely chemistry between them, and Kate had really made an impression on William. She played it very cool, and at one point when William seemed to lean in to kiss her, she pulled away. She didn’t want to give off the wrong impression or make it too easy for Will.”
Their romance got stronger after they moved in together in 2002.
“We’d had an unfortunate experience with some boys in the flat once before and we were determined not to have young men there again. Broken furniture, broken windows – there was a lot of damage, so that put us off really. I said to this young lady we’d really rather not have more boys and she said, ‘What if I were to tell you that it was Prince William?’” Landlady Charlotte Smith shared in 2023.
“We arranged to meet Kate Middleton, Fergus and Olivia before they moved in but we thought we’d better not ask to see Prince William because we thought his credit rating must be quite good. But he insisted on meeting us,” the landlady continued.
“We moved in together as friends because we were living together, we lived with a couple of others as well. It just sort of blossomed from there, really,” William said in their engagement video. “We just saw more of each other, hung out a bit more, and did stuff.”
“When I was trying to impress Kate, I was trying to cook these amazing fancy dinners, and what would happen was I would burn something, something would overspill, something would catch on fire and she would be sitting in the background trying to help, and basically taking control of the whole situation, so I was quite glad she was there at the time,” the future king continued.
“It was very romantic,” Kate said. “There’s a true romantic in there.”
In 2004, their relationship went public. Middleton attended to a skiing holiday with the royal family. A picture was taken of Kate and William while they were cozy on the slopes.
“Unfortunately for them, a paparazzi photographer took pictures of William and Kate clearly very close on the ski lift together. A red top tabloid newspaper slashed it all over their front page,” royal expert Rebecca England said.
“William was furious, and he was also genuinely worried for Kate and her family about what this would now mean for them.”
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