William and Kate had dated for nearly a decade, with a brief split in between, before William proposed.
The Prince later shared with royal photographer Arthur Edwards the real reason for the delay, explaining that he wanted to ensure their marriage would “last forever,” as reported by The Sun.
This sentiment echoed comments William made during the couple’s official engagement interview with Tom Bradby.
“This is a life in the public domain to a degree that you can’t escape, you both know that, you (William) obviously know it better than Kate does, you are obviously very protective of her,” Tom noted.
“Massively so,” William replied. “Her and her family, I want to make sure they have the best guidance and the chance to see what life has been like or what life is like in the family, that’s kind of almost why I have been waiting this long.
“I wanted to give her a chance to see in and to back out if she needed to before it all got too much. I’m trying to learn from lessons done in the past and I just wanted to give her the best chance to settle in and to see what happens on the other side.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Tom asked the happy pair: “Did you always have at the back of your minds that you wanted to marry each other? Did that come slowly or did you decide a couple of weeks ago, people have assumed you were going to be married for a long time. How did you both come to it in your heads?”
“When I first met Kate I knew there was something very special about her,” William shared. “I knew there was possibly something that I wanted to explore there. But we ended up being friends for a while and that was a good foundation.
“I do generally believe now that being friends with one another is a massive advantage. It just went from there. I knew over the years, I knew that things were getting better and better and we went through a few stumbling blocks as every relationship does, but we picked ourselves up and carried on.
“From where you had the odd problem when you are first getting to know each other, those have all gone and it is just really easy being with each other, it is really fun and I’m extremely funny and she loves that so it’s been good!”
Kate was then asked about the couple’s brief split and admitted that “at the time I wasn’t very happy about it” But, she noted, it had made her a “stronger person”.
“I think if you do go out with someone for quite a long time you do get to know each other very, very well, you go through the good times, you go through the bad times,” she explained. “Both personally and within a relationship as well. I think if you can come out of that stronger and learn things about yourself.”
