Kate (31 page)

Authors: Claudia Joseph

BOOK: Kate

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‘I had my military career and I really wanted to concentrate on my flying,’ he said after the engagement was announced. ‘I couldn’t have done this if I was still doing my training, so I’ve got that out of the way. Kate’s in a good place in terms of work and where she wants to be, and we both just decided now was a really good time.’

William is not the first member of the royal family to live with his wife while serving in the military. He is following in illustrious footsteps: Prince Philip was posted to Malta a year after his marriage to the young Princess Elizabeth, and the couple had one of the most carefree years of their married life there. They lived in Lord Mountbatten’s Villa Guardamangia and danced many a night away at Valletta’s Hotel Meridien Phoenicia.

Kate’s introduction to royal life stepped up a pace immediately she became engaged to the prince. Palace protocol dictated that until that day she was not accorded any status within the royal family. Although she had met the Queen socially on a couple of occasions, stories that she had dined alone with the monarch or had one-to-one meetings with her were greatly exaggerated. So were reports that her parents had met the monarch, making a mockery of spurious gossip that her mother Carole had breached etiquette by greeting her with the words ‘Pleased to meet you’.

There had also been much speculation over the grooming for royal life that Kate was supposed to have received since she began dating William and the personal protection she was supposed to have been afforded. In fact, she received little advice about how to handle the role until she became a royal fiancée.

But now Kate’s world has changed. She is entitled to round-the-clock police protection, has been assigned an official bodyguard from So14, the Royalty Protection Branch, and will have the full weight of the palace publicity machine.

It has been an extraordinary journey for the woman who was christened Catherine Elizabeth Middleton and has become known to the public as Kate. Like a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis, the shy, retiring schoolgirl has transformed into a confident and glamorous young woman with the poise to become a royal bride. Vogue editor Alex Shulman has described her as ‘a contemporary version’ of Princess Diana. ‘She has the same mainstream style and will go on, like Diana, to get more glamorous,’ she said. But Kate is made from a different mould; Diana had aristocratic connections and was a member of the Establishment. Kate’s background is more in line with those of the consorts of European royalty; on the Continent, the wives of princes and kings have degrees and careers. When Kate becomes Queen Catherine, she will be the first wife of a British monarch to have graduated from university, displayed her lingerie on the catwalk or lived with a king out of wedlock.

At some stage in the future, William V will become the 42nd monarch to ascend the throne since his namesake William the Conqueror overthrew Harold in the Battle of Hastings in 1066. Kate could be the sixth of her name to rule. The first was Catherine of Valois, daughter of the French King Charles VI, who married the Plantagenet King Henry V in 1420 after his historic win at Agincourt. Then there were three wives of Henry VIII: Catherine of Aragon, mother of his daughter Mary, whom he divorced; Catherine Howard, whom he beheaded; and Catherine Parr, who outlived him. Finally, there was the Portuguese infanta Catherine of Braganza, who married Charles II by proxy in 1662, two years after the restoration of the monarchy. She was the sister-in-law of Anne Hyde, the last commoner to marry a British king.

William and Kate are keeping their lips sealed over whether he got down on bended knee. Perhaps he followed in the footsteps of William Shakespeare’s Henry V when he proposed to his Kate:

A speaker is but a prater; a rhyme is but a ballad. A good leg will fall, a straight back will stoop, a black beard will turn white, a curled pate will grow bald, a fair face will wither, a full eye will wax hollow; but a good heart, Kate, is the sun and the moon, or rather the sun and not the moon, for it shines bright and never changes, but keeps his course truly. If thou would have such a one, take me; and take me, take a soldier; take a soldier, take a king.

Appendix: Kate Middleton’s Family Tree

Acknowledgements

T
here are so many people I would like to thank for helping me in the course of researching and writing this book, but a special thank you must go to journalist Simon Trump, without whose support I would never have got it written, and members of the Harrison, Goldsmith, Middleton, Lupton and Glassborow families who have been so kind and generous towards me in researching their family history.

I am extremely grateful to Sian James, the assistant editor of
The Mail on Sunday
, George Thwaites, the editor of the
Review
section and Marilyn Warnick, the books editor, whose advice has been invaluable and without whom I would never have got my first book published. I must also thank my solicitor, John Polsue, a partner at Alen-Buckley & Co., who has been incredibly supportive when I have needed legal advice.

I am also indebted to the journalists Laura Collins, Ian Gallagher, Jo Knowsley, Liz Sanderson, Daniel Townend and Edward Black, and the photographers Jason Buckner, Paul Macnamara and oscar Kornyei for their generous help.

And I would like to thank the following researchers, whose attention to detail is second to none: Andy Kyle; Peter Day; Patricia Irving; Tony Whitehead, author of
Mary Ann Cotton: Dead But Not Forgotten
; Vanda Hall, customer services assistant at Maidstone Library; Louise-Ann Hand, information librarian at Leeds Central Library; Michele Lefevre, local studies manager at Leeds Central Library; Richard High, team librarian in special collections at the Brotherton Library, Leeds; Leeds University archivist Liza Giffen; Adam Bull, webmaster at The Friends of Gledhow Valley Woods; Lyn Aspland, a historian at the Gledhow Valley Conservation Area Group; Neville Hurworth; Jane Powell, search room assistant at Berkshire Record office; and Caroline Liggett, senior archives and local studies assistant at the Centre for Buckinghamshire Studies.

Finally, I would like to thank my publisher, Bill Campbell, editor Claire Rose, editorial coordinator Graeme Blaikie, marketing and rights executive Amy Mitchell, designer Emily Bland, publicity manager Fiona Atherton and publicity consultant Sharon Campbell.

To donate to the Children’s Hospital, oxford, home to Tom’s Ward, referred to on p. 257, call 01865 743 444 or go to www.oxfordradcliffe.nhs.uk/getinvolved/charitablefunds/children/intro.aspx.

About the Author

CLAUDIA JOSEPH
was a pupil at Cheltenham Ladies’ College and was trained as a fashion journalist at the London College of Fashion before becoming a news reporter. She has worked at
Tatler
,
The Times
, and the
Mail on Sunday
, and regularly contributes to a number of national newspapers and magazines. She lives in London.

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KATE: THE MAKING OF A PRINCESS
. Copyright © 2009, 2010 by Claudia Joseph. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.

ISBN 978-0-06-208229-9

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