Kate Middleton’s ‘Long Courtship’ With Prince William Was ‘Absolutely Fundamental’ to Her Success
Kate Middleton gets the last laugh. Tabloids referred to her as “Waity Katie” in the early aughts suggesting she’d been anxiously awaiting Prince William’s marriage proposal. However, an expert says the couple’s “long courtship” ultimately became an asset. It helped the now-Princess of Wales become a royal family “success” and gave the pair a “solid foundation.”
Kate Middleton and Prince William dated for 10 years before marrying in 2011
The Prince and Princess of Wales met at the University of St. Andrews in 2001. Sparks were there from the start but William and Kate spent their first year in college as friends.
Only later, after a fashion show supposedly turned Kate from friend to love interest for William, did they start dating. Following a brief split in 2007 they were back together. Three years later, in the fall of 2010, William and Kate became engaged on a vacation in Kenya.
Their royal wedding took place on April 29, 2011, at Westminster Abbey. Now, they’re parents of three to Prince George, 9, Princess Charlotte, 7, and Prince Louis, 4.
Kate Middleton had time to ‘really understand’ royal life
Katie Nicholl, author of The New Royals: Queen Elizabeth’s Legacy and the Future of the Crown considers the decade of dating as a good thing.
“Marrying into the royal family may look easy, it may look like a wonderful life of round-the-clock staff,” she said. However, “The reality is, it’s really tough.”
“I think you look to the new Princess of Wales because she married as a commoner and is the first commoner in hundreds of years to marry a future king,” she told Fox News Digital. “And she has made a remarkable success of that role.”
The royal expert went on, referencing a comment William made in the pair’s November 2010 post-engagement announcement interview.
“It gave Kate the time to … really understand what royal life was going to be like and actually [decide] if it was what she wanted,” Nicholl said. “So, I think that 10-year courtship was absolutely fundamental.”
Now the Prince of Wales and first in the line of succession, William said at the time he didn’t rush marriage because he wanted to give Kate “a chance to see in and to back out if she needed to before it all got too much.”
William and Kate also developed a ‘really solid foundation’ as a couple
Not only did dating for a decade help Kate succeed as a royal but, according to Nicholl, it proved helpful in their relationship. It “enabled them to have a really solid foundation as a couple,” she said.
In their engagement interview, William listed friendship as a contributor to their “good foundation.”
“We ended up being friends for a while and that just sort of was a good foundation,” he said. “Because I do generally believe now that being friends with one another is a massive advantage.”
Additionally, what Nicholl called William and Kate’s “long courtship” gave the now-mother of three “time to work out what she was going to do when she became a royal.”
Today, Kate’s known for championing a number of causes. She’s even considered by some to be a parenting expert thanks to her “5 Big Questions” survey. As a longtime lover of photography, Kate’s been behind the camera for magazine cover shoots. She also released a photography book in 2021.
