PROFILE KATE MIDDLETON: Britain is gearing up for a right royal knees-up as the 'commoner' daughter of event planners prepares to walk down the aisle with her prince, writes Rosita Boland
CATHERINE Elizabeth Middleton has answered to several versions of her name since she was born, on January 9th, 1982. Known as Kate since her school days at Marlborough College, an exclusive public school in a market town in Wiltshire, she was gleefully described as Waity Katie for many years by certain sections of the world’s media. Since last Tuesday – when, eight years into her relationship with Prince William, elder son of Prince Charles, the couple announced their engagement – her name carries a new tag: that of royal fiancee.
The date has not been named for next year’s wedding, but Middleton will be internationally famous long before she walks down the aisle of whatever central London church is chosen for the ceremony. As the fiancee of the future king of England – arguably the world’s highest- profile royal – Middleton will be scrutinised minutely every time she appears in public from now on.
In certain British circles Middleton would be termed a “commoner”, meaning that she has no aristocratic or royal lineage. Her parents, Michael and Carole, are middle class, albeit very wealthily so. They became millionaires through Party Pieces, a mail-order business that they set up in 1987 and still run.
The eldest of three children, Middleton has a sister, Philippa (or Pippa), and a brother, James. She was born in Reading, a town about 50km west of London, and grew up in Bucklebury, a village in rural Berkshire. She was captain of the hockey team at Marlborough and was a good all-round athlete. She also took part in several dramatic productions there.
Apart from arriving at school as Catherine and leaving as Kate, she collected the nickname “Kate Middlebum”. Her only form of teenage mischief that seems to have made the papers so far is that she was prone to mooning at boys from the window of her school dormitory. It seems unlikely that any journalist will now ask her if it’s a true story.
After getting 11 GCSEs she spent a year in Chile, during which time she contemplated her choice of university. She settled on St Andrews, in Scotland, which got a surge in applications when students heard that Prince William was to study there.
Middleton and the prince, who both initially were studying art history, ran into each other quite early on. The prince paid £200 for a front-row seat at a university fashion show in which Middleton modelled underwear beneath a see-through dress. Some time after this they began going out together, although they kept their relationship out of the public eye for a long time, thanks in part to an agreement Buckingham Palace made with the British press to leave him alone while he was a student.
Since then they have been together almost the entire time – and so far no other previous boyfriends or girlfriends have crawled out of the woodwork to sell their stories. The couple have nicknames for each other that have been so widely reported we can only assume they are accurate. Hers is “Babykins”, his is “Big Willie”.
Middleton, who got a 2:1 in her degree, has worked little since leaving university. Her parents bought her an apartment in Chelsea, and for a short time she worked as an accessories buyer for Jigsaw, the women’s fashion chain, which is owned by friends of her parents.
Although she can’t have liked being portrayal as Waity Katie – a name derived in part from the fact that her life since college has revolved around the prince’s schedule – she has had almost uniformly positive coverage, with the worst insults aimed at her bland fashion sense. The nickname could easily have been changed to Weighty Katie if the royal girlfriend had been anything other than as slender as she is. After Sarah Ferguson, the duchess of York, gained a few pounds the British tabloids referred to her as the Duchess of Pork.
William broke the relationship off in 2007, but after a reconciliation holiday in the Seychelles they soon got back together. “Sources” from the “inner circle” beloved of tabloid newspapers have reported that at this point the prince agreed to marry her one day but said he “wasn’t ready to commit”.
Unlike some of Prince Harry’s girlfriends, Middleton, who appears both stoic and loyal, has not been photographed falling out of nightclubs. In recent years her appearance has become ever more groomed and glossy, and in public she gives off a sense of self-possession and composure.
She was not invited to the wedding of William’s father and Camilla Parker Bowles, in 2005, but she did attend William’s graduation from the Royal Military Academy, in Sandhurst, the following year.
It is Carole Middleton rather than her daughter who has attracted the most negative media coverage, being portrayed as pushy and inappropriately excited by her daughter’s relationship. Much was made of the fact that she chewed (nicotine) gum during William’s passing-out parade and that she apparently calls a toilet a toilet instead of using its more upper-class name of lavatory or loo.
Perhaps the real surprise so far in the relationship between Middleton and the prince is that, by the time they appeared before the world’s cameras last Tuesday, they had been living together openly for years.
Their engagement could not be more different from the medieval-style one that preceded Prince Charles’s disastrous marriage to Diana Spencer, whose family had to publicly pronounce her virginity.
We don’t know many details of William’s proposal, which he made last month while they were on holiday in Kenya. It has been rumoured that the prince, who flies Sea King helicopters as part of a four-man RAF search-and-rescue crew in north Wales, flew the two of them to a picturesque lake accessible only by air. Then he produced his mother’s sapphire-and-diamond engagement ring from the rucksack he had been carrying around for three weeks.
Ah, the ring. Middleton faced the cameras wearing blue to match the gigantic sapphire, as William’s mother had. He said he wanted his mother to be part of all the excitement, and he clearly sees the ring as a love token that unites the two most important women in his life rather than a reminder that his mother’s marriage ended in divorce.
And now it’s all about the wedding. The British prime minister, David Cameron, banged on a table in the Houses of Parliament when he heard the news: the huge public event that this royal wedding will be is guaranteed to provide lots of diverting coverage between now and whenever they marry. There is talk of moderation in the scale and expense of the wedding, to suit the lean times we live in, but the day is still bound to be watched by tens of millions and to be a traditional spectacle.
The souvenirs are already being produced, although there is some puzzlement about the name Middleton is now using. On Tuesday she formally became Catherine again: hence the appearance of crockery with “W & C” on it as well as some with “W & K”.
We know nothing else about the wedding so far – although we can guess that Party Pieces, which sells wedding supplies with the themes of “vintage retro”, “black and white” and “gold”, is unlikely to be called in to help with the preparations.
Curriculum vitae
Who is she?The future queen of England.
Why is she in the news?She got engaged to Prince William this week.
Most appealing characteristic?She appears to be genuinely in love.
Least appealing characteristic?A past tendency to moon out of windows.
Most likely to say?I do.
Least likely to say?Er, could I have a different ring, please?
