Kate, Duchess of Cambridge and Prince William met at university, both studying at St Andrews in Fife. They began dating, briefly split and now have been married for more than eight years. With adorable children Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis, life may seem perfect for the Cambridges – but it was once touch and go for Kate and William’s relationship.
According to royal author Christopher Anderson, it was Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall and William’s father Prince Charles who drove a wedge between the young couple.
In his royal biography, Game of Crowns, Mr Anderson focuses on three of the most famous Windsor women, the Queen, Camilla and Kate.
The author told The Daily Beast: “I have people telling me information about what’s going on behind the scenes—some on the record, some not—and I’ve always protected them and they’ve been wonderful.
“I was in London when the breakup [of William and Kate] occurred.
I was shocked, completely stunned, everyone thought it was only a matter of time before William was going to ask Kate to marry him.
“And then people started telling me that Camilla was behind it.”
Reports of Kate and William splitting circulated in 2006, and it came as a shock to many, with BBC Royal Correspondent Peter Hunt saying at the time: “It’s a surprise because it had seemed very stable and very steady.”
But why would Camilla want Kate and William to break up?
Mr Anderson explained: “Camilla is a bit of a snob. She’s an aristocrat, she has always been moving in Royal circles.
“She had always thought of herself as the heiress to Alice Keppel, her great-grandmother, who was the mistress of Edward VII.
“She was very proud of that connection, she boasted about that as a child and as an adult and that’s what she intended to be; part of the Royal circle in the role of mistress to the future king, and then the king.
“She did not look at Kate as someone who was worthy of joining the Royal Family.
“Kate is the first working-class woman to be accepted into the Royal Family. She is descended from coal miners and her mother was a flight attendant.
So for all those reasons Camilla never really felt that Kate Middleton as an individual and the Middleton family as a whole were going to be worthy of entering into the Royal Family.”
“I was told at the time of the breakup, and later on as well, that Camilla basically whispered in Charles’s ear that it was really time to make—to force—William to make a decision one way or the other.
“It has been since confirmed publicly that Charles did suggest to William that he either make a commitment to Kate or basically set her free, as it were.
Now, his motives for doing that may have been pure but Camilla’s…not so much. She was the instigator of this.”
However, William soon realised that he could not be apart from Kate, and the pair reconciled a few weeks after the split.
Their engagement was announced on November 16, 2010, and they married in a lavish ceremony at Westminster Abbey in London on April 29, 2011.
