The actual moment Prince William and Kate Middleton met—and no, it wasn't at uni
Think you know exactly how the Prince and Princess of Wales met? Think again.
While it’s well known that Prince William and Kate Middleton began dating while they were both students at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, they actually met some time before as high school students.
According to royal biographer Katie Nicholl, Kate and William met through friends when they were both in sixth form.
"I was speaking to some of her friends at Marlborough School, which is where [Kate] went before St. Andrews," Nicholl said in 2013.
"And they said, ‘Uh-uh, she didn’t meet him at St. Andrews, she met him before she got there, while she was at school during her sixth form through some of her friends. They knew Prince William and Prince Harry, so there wasn’t any meeting.’ And that, for me, it changed everything."
It was even before this that Kate first saw William, as Nicholl said that the Princess first laid eyes on her future husband when she was just nine years old.
Adding further details about the sighting in her book, Kate: The Future Queen, Nicholls wrote: "Although [Kate] wasn’t especially interested in boys, the arrival of one particular young man had caught her attention.
"Nearby Ludgrove Prep school would often play matches against St. Andrew’s Prep, and there was much excitement when Prince William, a left back on Ludgrove’s Colts team, came to St. Andrew’s to play a hockey match when he was nine years old. William, like Kate, loved sports and was one of the best hockey and rugby players in his year. Of course, the arrival of the prince generated a flurry of excitement. It was the first time Kate had set her eyes on the young prince but certainly not the last."
Kate attended Marlborough College as a teenager, while William famously attended Eton College in Windsor. The schools are only an hour’s drive apart so they could certainly have met as high school students.
Both Will and Kate took a gap year after school, both using it as an opportunity to travel, before starting at St Andrews where they both studied Art History - although William later changed to Geography.
After announcing their engagement in 2010, William revealed more details of how their relationship formed, stating: "When I first met Kate, I knew there was something very special about her. I knew there was possibly something that I wanted to explore there. We ended up being friends for a while and that just sort of was a good foundation. Because I do generally believe now that being friends with one another is a massive advantage. And it just went from there."
Kate added: "I actually think I went bright red when I met you and sort of scuttled off, feeling very shy. But we did become very close friends from quite early."
With Netflix’s sixth and final season of The Crown set to drop in two parts this November and December, we can expect to get a glimpse of the fictional Kate and Will on screen as the show charts the Royal Family through the late 1990s and early 2000s.
"Prince William (Ed McVey) is entering university at St. Andrews, where he hopes to lead as normal a life as possible before taking up his royal responsibilities," Netflix said in a statement earlier this year.
"Little does he know that the future for the crown begins right on campus, when he meets fellow student from Berkshire Kate Middleton (Meg Bellamy)."
We, for one, can’t wait to see how their meeting plays out on screen.
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