The Prince and Princess of Wales will be celebrating their 15th wedding anniversary next month and everyone knows the story of how they first met. However, Kate was initially set to attend Edinburgh University and not St Andrews, so her and William’s romance nearly never happened.
According to royal expert and author Russell Myers, Carole Middleton and her husband Michael were apparently totally “against” Kate changing her mind. Writing in William & Catherine: The Intimate Inside Story, he suggested that the Middleton matriarch was especially concerned when she first heard about Kate’s plan.
“At first, Carole and Michael were dead set against the idea, with Carole in particular worried about her daughter losing academic momentum,” he claims, explaining that it was the Princess’s reasoning that eventually won her mum and dad round.
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Myers states, “But after listening to Catherine explain that she believed she would be suited to the quieter surroundings of St Andrews rather than the city life that Edinburgh would provide, they agreed to her decision.”
Carole and Michael’s apprehension might have been partly down to how unexpected it was. She returned from ten weeks volunteering in Chile during her gap year with this new idea “to present to her parents”.
The author notes that the timing later resulted in “accusations that she changed her mind about Edinburgh because she wanted to follow the dashing young Prince William to St Andrews”.
This reportedly wasn’t the case at all, with Myers suggesting that the Princess was inspired to consider St Andrews after bonding with an 18-year-old from Somerset whilst in South America.
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This girl was apparently set to study engineering there and so Kate “decided to explore the option” of changing her own course. Having eased her parents’ uncertainty, the Princess of Wales went to St Andrews where she studied art history and became friends with the future King.
They were initially even on the same course before he later switched to geography. From the sounds of it, if Kate hadn’t done such an excellent job of explaining why she wanted to switch universities, her parents could potentially have tried to persuade her to stick with Edinburgh.
In that case, there would have been no meeting William, so it just goes to show that the smallest of changes can have a staggering impact on our lives.
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The entire Middleton family is incredibly close and they’ve whole-heartedly embraced Prince William as part of it. In the couple’s engagement interview in 2010, the Prince of Wales talked about how well he gets on with his in-laws.
“Kate’s got a very, very close family. I get on really well with them and I’m very lucky that they’ve been so supportive,” he said. “Mike and Carole have been really loving and caring and really fun and have been really welcoming towards me so I’ve felt really a part of the family.”
In turn, they’ve been at so many big royal occasions such as the coronation and it’s been reported that Prince William really wanted them to be properly included in this event.
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