Game of Crowns: Elizabeth, Camilla, Kate, and the Throne (29 page)

Just as his brother had done eight months before, William, wearing the red sash of the sovereign’s banner holder, tried not to break up when the Queen passed before him while reviewing the troops. From here, William would join Harry with the Household Cavalry’s hard-drinking Blue and Royals (nicknamed the Booze and Royals). While Harry was destined for an army career that included combat duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, the future king would also do stints in the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force to acquaint himself with all branches of the British military.

At one point during the proceedings, everyone repaired to Sandhurst’s Grand Entrance Hall for the unveiling of a new group portrait of the Windsors. Camilla held her breath—it was the first official portrait of the Royal Family to include her. The painting by Sergei Pavlenko depicted the Queen dressed in a pale yellow, fur-trimmed coat and the Windsor men in all their gold-braided, medaled glory. Looking sadly out of place in a funereal black dress, the Duchess of Cornwall was shoved into the background, her face and body almost completely obscured by Sandhurst’s Commandant, Major General Andrew Ritchie. The Queen pronounced the work—practically invisible Camilla and all—to be nothing less than “splendid.”

Kate beamed as Sandhurst’s brass band broke into an upbeat rendition of Abba’s “Dancing Queen.” As William marched by, she cooed to Carole, “I love the uniform. It’s so, so sexy.”

The next day’s papers made it abundantly clear that neither the Queen nor even William (and certainly not Charles or Camilla) were the stars at Sandhurst that day. The front-page headline in the
Telegraph
said it all:
KATE REIGNS AT WILLIAM
’
S PARADE
.
More to the point, the Middletons’ presence at one of the most important milestones in William’s life seemed to sweep away any lingering doubts about where this was all heading. Overnight, British bookmakers cut the odds of a royal engagement from five to one to two to one, and then stopped taking bets completely. For all practical intents and purposes, William and Kate’s future was, or at least so it seemed, a fait accompli.

No one, least of all Kate, was prepared for what Fleet Street had up its collective sleeve. The next day’s papers were filled with photos of Carole Middleton madly chewing gum—albeit nicotine, to help her quit smoking—as well as reports of her crassly asking for directions to the “toilet” when she should have said “lavatory.”

Soon Kate’s mother was being called “Carole Meddleton,” and the instructions given to British cabin crews once a plane has landed—“doors to manual”—were now used to mock her past as a flight attendant. “A whispering campaign was launched to make Kate’s mother look uncouth and scheming,” said a courtier who believed the Palace’s Men in Gray were behind it. “There was nothing subtle about it.”

The ploy backfired. After years of waiting, Kate was finally invited by the Queen to join the Royal Family for Christmas lunch at Sandringham—the first time any girlfriend had received such an invitation. Carole later said she wept when she heard the news.

“Waity Katie,” as the tabloid press now derisively referred to her, was markedly less enthusiastic. Rather than instantly accepting the coveted invitation, she used it to try to force William’s hand. Kate politely declined, reminding her prince that the Queen always insisted Christmas was for close family only, and that as long as there was no engagement ring on her finger, she could not bring herself to intrude.

Instead, Miss Middleton opted to spend Christmas with her family just as she always did—only this time at Jordanstone House, an eighteenth-century estate the family was renting just outside the sleepy Scottish hamlet of Alyth. William promised to join the Middletons for New Year’ Eve, but called at the last minute to cancel. Kate, who like the rest of the world was convinced a marriage proposal was imminent, ended the phone conversation in tears.

To the outside world, it was only a question of when. “The time is ripe for the announcement of an engagement,” wrote the
Sunday Times
’s Deirdre Fernand, who argued that Kate’s “elegance, dignity, and beauty” made her “the People’s Choice.” Engagement rumors gathered further momentum when, in a
Spectator
story headlined “The Next People’s Princess,” Patrick Jephson went so far as to predict William would pop the question on Kate’s twenty-fifth birthday. Scores of photographers were camped outside Oak Acre to snap the “engagement picture” on January 9, but when nothing happened it hardly mattered. Souvenir shops throughout the United Kingdom continued to do a brisk business selling cups, plates, mouse pads, pens, pencils, and cellphone covers bearing the happy couple’s likeness.

Over the next few months, when he wasn’t undergoing tank commander training at a base in Dorset, William partied hard with his army buddies. Kate, left alone in London to fend off the paparazzi, grew more humiliated with each new snapshot of William dancing the night away with some random girl in a smoky London club.

By the time they showed up together at the annual Cheltenham horse race at the end of March 2007, their body language said it all. The normally ebullient Kate scowled behind dark glasses as William walked several steps ahead of her, eyes downcast.

If no one else took notice of this sea change in the couple’s relationship, the Queen certainly did. In fact, there was ample anecdotal evidence that very little that went on in and around the Royal Family escaped her eagle eye. On one occasion, for example, the Queen glanced out the window of her Buckingham Palace study and spotted something strange. “Do the Welsh Guards have new uniform requirements?” she asked her equerry. “That soldier setting up the bandstand is wearing red socks instead of the regulation green.”

After Trooping the Colour ceremonies or at other times when she was called upon to inspect soldiers, commanding officers could expect quick critiques from Her Majesty. “Why was that soldier in the second row slightly out of step?” she asked one year, while another time she wanted to know if a soldier in the back row who had nicked his hand on his bayonet required medical attention. The senior officer couldn’t answer the Queen; no one else had noticed that the soldier was bleeding.

So it came as no surprise when the Queen noticed that, public sentiment to the contrary, there had been a decided shift in William’s attitude toward Miss Middleton. When she inquired, Prince Philip, who had been discussing the matter with Charles, filled his wife in on the latest developments in their grandson’s romantic life. It seemed William had gone to his father, seeking advice. Before he gave any, the Prince of Wales asked about William’s long-term intentions. Did he plan to marry Kate “in the end?” William replied that his relationship with Kate now felt “claustrophobic.” He was only twenty-five, he asserted, and not ready to settle down with anyone.

Charles went on to tell his son that it was cruel to keep stringing Kate along. It was, said the man who had essentially kept the
love of his life waiting for forty years, “better that you break it off now.”

Before counseling William, Charles had, of course, asked Camilla for her opinion. The Duchess of Cornwall had always liked and even admired Kate, but that was not the issue. Camilla still harbored misgivings about Kate’s working-class roots, and believed that the best match for William was to be found among the daughters of their aristocratic friends. She was also “disgusted with William and Kate sucking up all the attention,” a former Clarence House staffer said. “Camilla knew the Prince of Wales suffered this as much as she did. Charles and Camilla needed the love of the people and they figured there is only so much love to go around.”

At first, Charles was reluctant to tell William to break it off with Kate. After all, among the senior Royals, the Prince of Wales had always been Kate’s biggest booster. But Camilla argued convincingly that, out of deference to Kate, this was the wisest course.

Kate became suspicious when William, who had spent at least part of every Easter holiday with the Middletons for the past five years, declined their invitation. Then, on April 11, 2007, Kate sought privacy in a back conference room at Jigsaw—and listened as William ended their six-year romance in a cellphone call.

It’s not a question of wanting to be King. It’s something that I was born into and it’s my duty.

—WILLIAM

From the pit to the palace in three generations!

—MALCOLM ROSS, LONGTIME COURTIER, ON THE RISE OF THE MIDDLETONS

WESTMINSTER ABBEY

APRIL 29, 2011

This time, the Queen was nothing short of ecstatic—so much so that she declared a national holiday to mark the historic event. It was “not just about the beautiful Princess and the handsome Prince,” said Prime Minister David Cameron, who as a teenager had slept in the streets to catch a glimpse of Charles and Diana on their wedding day. “It’s a day we celebrate the monarchy itself.” It was also a day, Cameron added, that the world got its first look at “the team of the future” that would take the monarchy—“the incredible, extraordinary institution that binds us all together”—deep into the twenty-first century.

Less than five months earlier, antimonarchist mobs screaming “Off with their heads!” had attacked the classic 1977 Rolls-Royce Phantom VI carrying Charles and Camilla. Kate had her pick of
any car in the royal fleet to use on her wedding day, but insisted instead that the same heavily battered car be repaired. This way, when she and her father arrived at Westminster Abbey, there could be no doubt: The monarchy was as strong as ever.

The ceremony itself was flawless, right down to the bride’s wedding band made of Welsh gold—the final precious fragment from the original Clogau St. David’s mine nugget that the Queen had denied to Camilla but happily reserved for Kate. (Unlike his father, William decided not to wear a wedding ring.)

After the world’s most famous newlyweds exchanged vows—like Diana before her, Kate omitted the word “obey”—a roar of approval went up outside the Abbey when the Archbishop of Canterbury pronounced them “man and wife.” Once outside, William and Kate climbed into the same horse-drawn open carriage that had carried Charles and Diana from St. Paul’s Cathedral three decades earlier. Just as the 1902 State Landau began its trip past one million well-wishers lining the wedding route to Buckingham Palace, Kate turned to her new husband and smiled. “I’m so happy,” she said.

The Wedding of the Century had cost an estimated $34 million—$500,000 of that graciously contributed by the parents of the bride. Easily the biggest media event of the twenty-first century thus far, the royal wedding of William and Kate was covered by ten thousand journalists and watched on television and via the internet by an estimated 3 billion people in 180 countries—the largest global audience since Diana’s funeral.

Understandably, much of the commentary centered on the dazzling bride, who wore a dress of ivory silk overlaid with lace by Alexander McQueen’s Sarah Burton, diamond chandelier earrings, and the Cartier Halo tiara, loaned to her by the Queen. This particular tiara, given to the Queen Mother just before her
husband became king, had been passed along to Elizabeth II on her eighteenth birthday. William wore the scarlet and braided ceremonial uniform of a colonel in the Irish Guards, and the wings of the RAF on his light-blue garter sash.

Less showy, but equally powerful for the message they conveyed, were the blooms that made up Kate’s bridal bouquet: sweet william and lily of the valley, Diana’s favorite. To leave no doubt that the late Princess of Wales’s presence was still very much felt here, Kate had large planters overflowing with lilies of the valley placed along the nave. The effect was, said wedding guest Barbie Allbritton, “very English country garden.”

With forty television cameras inside the Abbey trained on their every expression and whispered confidence, William and Kate exuded remarkable confidence, dignity, and poise. “It was an image of vitality and strength mixed with sheer joy,” said Paddy Harverson, communications secretary to the Prince of Wales and official spokesman for the newlyweds. “They were the perfect couple enjoying a perfect moment, and it gave a lift to the whole country. It was an historic moment for the monarchy, everyone could see that.” Her Majesty was clearly thrilled with the result, leaning over to tell Prince Philip that the ceremony was simply “amazing!”

That morning, the Queen had bestowed upon them the titles Duke and Duchess of Cambridge—but with a difference. Tossing protocol out the window, it would also now be considered perfectly proper to call Kate “Princess Catherine.” In the past, only a blood princess—someone born a princess—could have that title used in front of their Christian name. So technically, she was Catherine, Princess William of Wales. But the Queen was willing to make an exception in this one case. “It is absolutely natural that the public want to call them ‘Prince William and Princess
Catherine,’ ” said Harverson. “No one is going to have any argument with that.”

The same courtesy was not shown Camilla, who at the very least had the perfect right to be called Camilla, Princess of Wales—a right she wisely chose not to exercise for fear of offending fans of Diana. While Kate could now be called “Princess Catherine,” Camilla was stuck for the time being with “Duchess.”

By way of establishing Kate as a bona fide royal personage, her father was called upon weeks earlier to submit a Middleton coat of arms that could be “impaled” (merged) with William’s. The bride selected three acorns and sprigs to represent herself, Pippa, and their brother, James—an allusion to Oak Acres, the family home in Berkshire. A gold chevron running across the center symbolized both Carole’s place at the heart of the family and her maiden name, Goldsmith.

Stepping out onto the Buckingham Palace balcony with the rest of the royal wedding party, the bride and groom waved, smiled, and then quickly kissed for the euphoric throng gathered around Victoria fountain. Instantly aware that they had disappointed the crowd, they kissed again—this time passionately—and the multitude responded with a thunderous cheer.