Over the years, royalists and biographers have desperately tried to rewrite, reimagine and reengineer the early days of Prince William & Kate Middleton’s acquaintance and relationship. No one even knows when they first met, although I think it’s been widely established that they met at least once before university. We know for a fact that Kate tried to follow William around during their gap year, and we also know that once William announced his plan to attend St. Andrews, Kate suddenly scrapped her plan to attend the University of Edinburgh and she quickly applied to St. Andrews. Even the most generous royal biographers struggle to describe Kate’s behavior as anything other than a sort of creepy fixation with William. She repeatedly threw herself into his path for years before they started dating. When The Crown tried to deal with this issue, they blamed the university switch on Carole Middleton trying to meddle on Kate’s behalf, like Carole was the one throwing Kate into William’s path. LMAO. Well, Russell Myers did his own spin on how Kate ended up at St. Andrews. Enjoy.
The Princess of Wales’s decision to attend the University of St Andrews raised her parents’ eyebrows when she first filled them in on the news following her ten-week trip to Chile. She was in South America on a volunteering expedition with the Raleigh International Programme and returned home to Berkshire with an idea. The young student revealed she intended to enrol in the Fife-based institution.
However, her news was supposedly not well-received by her parents, Carole and Michael Middleton, as they feared she was only keen to attend St Andrews to follow her love interest, Prince William, who announced he would be studying there in August 2000. Kate was originally due to start an Art History degree at the University of Edinburgh before her change of mind led her to graduate with an honours degree in History of Art from St Andrews in 2005.
In his tell-all book, William & Catherine: The Intimate Inside Story, about the royal couple, Russell Myers revealed why the princess’s parents were “dead set” against Kate attending William’s university initially.
He said: “At first, Carole and Michael were dead set against the idea, with Carole in particular worried about her daughter losing academic momentum, but after listening to Catherine explain that she believed she would be suited to the quieter surroundings of St Andrews rather than the city life that Edinburgh would provide, they agreed to her decision.”
The royal journalist revealed the real reason behind Kate’s change of heart, and explained: “The timing of Catherine’s announcement to her parents would, years later, result in accusations that she changed her mind about Edinburgh because she wanted to follow the dashing young Prince William to St Andrews, where in August 2000 he had announced he would be studying. But the truth is that during the trip she had met a fellow student, an 18-year-old girl from Somerset who was set to go to the University of St Andrews, in Fife on the east coast of Scotland, to study engineering. The two hit it off so well that Catherine decided to explore the option of changing her course while she was still away.”
This revisionist history is absolutely hilarious. For years, it was “so what, of course Kate stalked William, it worked, didn’t it?” Then it was “actually that’s sort of a creepy story, but whatever, it ended well.” Then it was “actually Carole Middleton masterminded everything and Kate was an innocent pawn!” And now, all of these years later, the story has morphed into “actually Carole was very concerned that Kate would lose academic momentum because Kate would be so focused on landing William, but Kate wasn’t even thinking about William!” It’s such a huge “tell” that everyone continues to rewrite this history too. At this point, I genuinely believe that Carole and Kate were always 100% in cahoots and this was all a joint plan. Kate wanted to go to St. Andrews specifically because William announced his plan to attend, and Carole completely backed her decision and facilitated as much as she could.
Photos courtesy of Cover Images.
