The love story of the Prince and Princess of Wales caught the attention of the wide public the moment their relationship went public.
William and Kate met at St. Andrews University. At the time, the Prince didn’t enjoy the classes because he was far away for home. Speaking of those days he said he didn’t think he was homesick, but “daunted,” according to royal author Katie Nicholl.
“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,” William was reported to have said.
During the second term, William laid eyes on Kate, who was described as “quiet” and “shy.” It didn’t take long before he asked her to join him at the dinning hall.
In the fall of 2002, they both moved to an off-campus apartment together with other friends. The Prince, however, was nearly not allowed to move in due to the “no boys policy.”
“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?’” Charlotte Smith, the landlady, told the Daily Mail.
It was Smith’s husband who convinced her to make an exception for the young Prince.
“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,” she added.
William was a romantic guy who would try to impress Kate with cooking for her.
What he feared at the time was that if their relationship went public, the paparazzi would go after Kate, and he didn’t want that because he was very protective of her.
However, during a ski trip, a photographer took a photo of the couple cozied up on the slopes and that photo appeared on the cover of a magazine the following day. Needless to say, this left William enraged.
“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 on Channel 5’s documentary William & Kate: Too Good To Be True. “William was furious, and he was also genuinely worried for Kate and her family about what this would now mean for them.”
And as everyone believed a royal marriage was just around the corner, the two split in 2007.
Recalling the time of their break up, both Kate and William claimed it was actually good for them because they got to “find themselves.” Kate even said that “you can get quite consumed by a relationship when you’re younger,” as per The Telegraph.
The two got back together in 2008 and William proposed to Kate in 2010 during a trip to Kenya with his late mother’s engagement ring.
Today, after three children and years of being together, William and Kate’s relationship is as strong as ever.