Kate looks fab heading to a wedding in 2008. (Goff/INFPhoto.com)
(
)
The DVD launch party for “Rabbit Fever,” a mockumentary about the Rampant Rabbit sex toy, is a rather unlikely destination for the future queen of England. But in June 2007, that was exactly where newly single Kate Middleton was to be found. Having been let down by Prince William, the future heir to the throne, Kate was letting her hair down, dancing alone at Kitts nightclub in Chelsea, West London.
Fellow partygoers were shocked to see Kate, wearing a pair of Playboy bunny ears handed out by the party’s organizers, on the dance floor in the early hours of the morning.
Middleton had split up with Prince William two months before, after he was reported to have experienced commitment issues and felt he was too young to settle down. Kate, 28, would reunite with Prince William a few months later — but in the summer of 2007, she was in party-animal mode. Still, there was a method to her social madness.
“It was classic Kate,” says a friend of the pair, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
“She was not short of new suitors eager to catch her on the rebound from the prince, but she did not respond to the overtures of a single guy. Her ‘Rabbit Fever’ appearance, along with other nights on the town, was designed to give William frequent public reminders of what he was missing.”
In light of the couple announcing their engagement yesterday at St. James’ Palace and Kate Middleton triumphantly showing off the blue 18-carat sapphire engagement ring that once belonged to Princess Diana, William’s mother, we can safely say she succeeded.
But just who is Catherine Elizabeth Middleton?
And how did she end up being the first nonblueblood since the 1600s to marry a future British monarch?
As the British press has delighted in pointing out, Kate is descended from humble stock; she counts miners and day workers as her ancestors.
Her parents are solidly middle class: Her mother, Carole, was a flight attendant; her father, Michael, a flight dispatcher for British Airways. They raised Kate and her brother and sister in Berkshire, a county in southeast England. In 1987, Michael and Carole took advantage of the resurgent entrepreneurial spirit sweeping over Margaret Thatcher’s Britain — and founded Party Pieces, a mail-order company that sells party supplies. It made them millionaires — and Kate was able to attend Marlborough College, a prestigious prep school. She went on to study art history at the University of St. Andrews, where she met Prince William. (Indeed if Middleton becomes queen, she’ll be the first college-educated British queen!)
As the eldest son of Charles and Diana, William has long been the source of relentless media attention — the National Enquirer even linked him with Cindy Crawford while he was a schoolboy at Eton. The prince’s dignified response to the car crash that killed his mother in August 1997 cemented the British public’s affection for him.
Prior to Kate, William enjoyed romances and close friendships with a number of girls whose very names — Rose Farquhar, Isabella Anstruther-Gough-Calthorpe, Jecca Craig — indicated they occupied a higher rung on the social ladder than Kate Middleton.
William and Kate were flatmates at St. Andrews, but it was not love at first sight. Both were seeing other people when they first got to know each other. Precisely when they became an item is still unknown. One theory is that William became smitten with Kate when he sat in the front row of a university fashion show and watched her on the runway.
“That’s the moment when William sat up and took notice of the girl who until then had only been his friend,” says Katie Nicholl, royal correspondent for the UK Mail on Sunday, whose biography, “William and Harry: Behind Palace Walls,” was published last week.
“He said, ‘Wow, Kate’s hot.’ She was wearing a see-through dress, and totally captured William.”
The pair were first publicly identified as being an item while skiing in Klosters, Austria, in 2004. Still, on that trip, William shot down rumors that he would swiftly seal the deal, telling reporters: “I don’t want to get married until I’m at least 28, or maybe 30.” Since then, it has been a protracted courtship, to say the least. The British media took great delight in showcasing the pair attending the weddings of their friends, while they themselves remained unmarried; they even dubbed Middleton “Waity Katie.”
Kate’s patience has paid off, with most royal watchers expecting an August wedding. Besides the nuptials, they’re excited about the possibility of Wills and Kate ascending the throne, which would happen after the deaths of both Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles. (Prince Phillip was never a king because when the monarch is a queen, her husband can’t outrank her.)
Middleton now works for her parents’ business after a spell as a fashion buyer. “In another life she could have been a communications supremo, since she has not put a foot wrong in public,” says a friend of the pair, who asked to remain anonymous.
“Not once did Kate send any signal via friends to the media that she wanted William to hurry up and propose.”
During the past three years, William, a search-and-rescue pilot for the Royal Air Force, has cut down on socializing with his male friends and going to nightclubs. The pair have enjoyed a relationship that seems warm and affectionate.
Kate spends half the week with her parents in Berkshire and half the week with William in Wales, where the couple will live during their engagement.
“William and Kate are perfectly suited,” says biographer Nicholl. “I was at St. James’ Palace with them today, and they are so happy if a little nervous. Kate has been waiting for this day for a long time, and so have we all. Judging from the scenes at the palace today, where the announcement was made, this wedding is going to be just as big as 1981, when Charles and Diana married.”
Hopefully, though, with a much happier ending.