Incredible detail hidden in photo of Kate Middleton, Princess of Wales
It’s a photo of a normal-looking young university grad, beaming with her boyfriend. But it highlights a remarkable story that has changed the royals forever.
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Fate is a strange thing. In the 1970s, when a nice Leeds boy named Michael Middleton met former secretary Carole Goldsmith, who ever would have guessed that their future did not just hold fondue forks, blue curacao cocktails and all-inclusive family trips to Tenerife but would become intimately intertwined with that of a millennium’s worth of Kings and Queens?
This week, a newly resurfaced photo has revived not only Michael and Carole’s role in royal history but the degree to which Kate was such an extraordinary long shot as a royal bride and the remarkable obstacles she has had to overcome.
And this simple quirk? This turn of destiny and Kate saying yes to her boyfriend? It might just have saved the crown.
It was 19 years ago this week when either Carole or Michael picked up a camera and snapped a photo that will still be appearing in holographic textbooks a century from now. In it, two freshly graduated university students sweetly have their arms around one another, relaxed, delighted, affectionate. Moreover – normal.
This was to be the first ever personal photo released of Prince William and his steady squeeze Kate, now obviously the Prince and Princess of Wales.
But there is more to this shot than simple nostalgia or a bit of mournful longing for a time when sightings of Kate weren’t rarer than in-the-wild spottings of a white rhino.
In 2022, William’s brother Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex decided to share his two cents (and to earn oodles more) while the Netflix cameras rolled, expounding on the topic of royalty and romance.
“For so many people in the family, especially obviously the men, there can be a temptation or urge to marry someone who fits in the mould, as opposed to somebody who you are perhaps destined to be with,” Harry said.
“The difference between making decisions with your head, or your heart. And my mum [Diana, Princess of Wales] made most of her decisions, if not all of them, from her heart. And I am my mother’s son.”
Golly, whoever could he have been referring to? And should someone point here that, reportedly, Diana was in fact hand-selected by the Queen Mother, working in cahoots with her grandmother Ruth, Lady Fermoy, as a possible marital candidate for Charles precisely because she ‘fit the mould’? Titled, supposedly pliant, and with no ex-boyfriend skeletons in the closet?
These days, Kate looks like she was born specifically to be the Princess of Wales; that she was genetically engineered in a lab to ensure that her hair is extra lustrous; her poise, impeccable; her taste in blazers, reassuringly conventional. Warm, sweet, kind, smiley and oh-so-ridiculously photogenic, Kate is every monarchist’s dream rolled up in a sensible pair of nude heels.
But if we go back to that 2005 photo (which was released just before their 2011 wedding) what you realise is how extraordinary it was that William picked Kate, that she stuck with him, and how little the art history grad actually “fitted the mould”.
See, up until he started dating his now-wife, William had generally only been linked to girls who had at minimum double, if not triple, barrelled surnames, baronetcies and peerages littered throughout Debrett’s and intimately knew the problems of heating a stately home.
As a future King, William seemed destined to end up with someone named Arabella or Harriet or Minty and who was good humoured, good with horses and a good sport.
And then in late 2003, reports started to appear that the geography student prince was spending quite a bit of time with his housemate, a girl named Kate.
In April 2004, photos of them skiing in Klosters would confirm that they were, in fact, an item and doing more than sharing the occasional textbook over a refectory chip butty.
Cupid had struck and the tabloids had hit pay dirt. Everyone was happy, right?
Of course not, because the path of true love never doth run smooth. In staying together, in making their relationship ultimately work, took them going up against a number of outside forces.
After that graduation shot was taken, and Kate had moved to London, any notion that 21st century Britain might have shed any of its snobbery and classism was hit on the head.
At this point in time, according to former Diana confidant Richard Kay writing in the Daily Mail, Kate became the butt of “cackling jokes” about her “breeding” from royal friends. that William’s chums thought it a right laugh to snigger to one another “doors to manual” when she turned up somewhere in reference to Carole’s former career as a hostie.
Meanwhile, at the same time that those old Etonian sorts were targeting William’s girlfriend, so was the press.
Back then, it was only eight short years since Diana had died while being chased by the paparazzi, and day in and day out, Kate was being … chased by the paparazzi.
The memory of her death and the circumstances around it could not have been far away.
Walking down the street, grocery shopping, heading out for a drink with friends, at train stations and at airports. Kate was valuable prey and she was hunted and hounded and harried across the well-to-do bits of London while also being maliciously labelled ‘Waity Katie’.
And throughout all of this, while still only in her early 20s, she never once punched a snapper or let forth with a stream of the sort of four letter words worthy of a grizzled sailor or necked two bottles of pinot grigio and then stumbled off to the Earl’s Court Maccas.
Nor did her dating the most eligible bachelor in the world turn her head and she never demanded a better table at Nobu or had a tantrum after the 14th photographer in a row yelled something crude at her in the hope of making her react or used her position as the love interest of a future King to snaffle free handbags or tickets to Les Mis.
There must have been no end of moments of frustration, sadness, loneliness, anger, and misery when Kate must have wondered, is this guy worth it?
The extreme baggage and suffering that came with being a royal girlfriend (and wife) has claimed no end of other royal relationships, most notably, Prince Harry with Chelsy Davy and Cressida Bonas. Also, at least one for King Charles in the late 70s and Prince Andrew and his first great love, actress Koo Stark.
However luckily, Kate stuck it out. At a time when the princess has disappeared, as she is being treated for cancer, it is worth remembering what she endured to get to this point.
From our perspective now, nearly 20 years after Carole or Michael took that graduation photo, I think we can confidently say that the monarchy would be well and truly stuffed if William had not had the foresight and the heart-shaped eyes to latch onto Kate and she had not had the maturity and the groundedness to stick with him through all the trials and tribulations and requirements to wear scratchy tweed.
There is a story that goes around semi-regularly, that in the aughties when William and Kate were in their 20s and dating, that someone was enthusing about how lucky she was to have snaffled the affections of a prince only for Kate to reply, “he’s lucky to be dating me”.
Too right. William was, and is, “lucky” and moreover the monarchy is dead bloody lucky.
Lucky that Kate hung in there, lucky that was and is made of tougher stuff and lucky she is not remotely squeamish about taking down a bracket or two of grouse.
What that 2005 photo captures is the crown, whether it knew it or not, being quietly saved.
Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.
Originally published as Incredible detail hidden in photo of Kate Middleton, Princess of Wales
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