1476743959 (N) by Christopher Andersen

Author:Christopher Andersen
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Gallery Books
Published: 2016-04-18T23:00:00+00:00

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THE FATE OF THE HOUSE of Windsor would have to wait as Prince William sorted out his academic future. After he aced his A-levels—the British equivalent of finals and the SATs combined—and graduated with honors, William had his pick of any institution of higher learning in the world. (The notion that any university would turn down the future King of England even if he were a mediocre student seemed, in the words of one British journalist, “laughable.”)

The pressure on William to attend Oxford (the Spencers’ alma mater) or Cambridge (Charles’s) was such that he decided to choose neither. Instead, he took Granny’s advice and began considering Scottish universities. Nationalism was on the rise in Scotland, and the Queen’s advisors were warning her that a referendum to break away from the United Kingdom seemed likely at some point. It could only help matters for the Crown, she suggested over tea, if for the very first time an heir to the throne attended a Scottish university.

At first unaware that William was considering breaking with tradition to attend a college in Scotland, Kate Middleton was also weighing her options. Carole Middleton, in particular, wanted all her of children to attend one of three elite British universities—the kinds of institutions where, Dorothy Goldsmith told her cousin, “you meet the sons of all the right people.”

As had been the case for William, Oxford and Cambridge were the default choices. But Kate had her eye on a career curating contemporary art and photography shows, and the University of Edinburgh in Scotland was known for having a particularly strong arts curriculum. After visiting the Edinburgh campus together, Kate and her mother agreed that it was the best place for her to pursue a degree in art history. Another deciding factor: By late spring of 2000, newspapers were reporting that Prince William would be attending Edinburgh once he completely his “gap year” doing volunteer work abroad.

Like many of their art student peers, Kate headed for Florence, where she divided her time among museums and galleries and sidewalk cafés. William’s gap year, however, was meticulously crafted by the Palace to plump up the resume of a monarch-in-training.

First stop: the jungles of Belize in Central America, where William encountered poisonous snakes, wild boars, mosquitoes, and scorpions while training with a unit of the Welsh Guards. Then came a three-week expedition with the Royal Geographical Society’s marine observation program, scuba diving and snorkeling off Rodrigues Island in the Indian Ocean.

Before embarking on his next adventure, William returned to London, only to face another, wholly unexpected challenge. Diana’s former private secretary, Patrick Jephson, had published Shadows of a Princess, a scathing indictment of the Princess that portrayed her as shrewd, unstable, and manipulative.

With permission from both Charles and the Queen, William gave his first-ever press conference to defend his mother’s memory. Incredibly, the Press Complaints Commission had done such a splendid job of keeping journalists at bay that this marked the first time the public had actually heard William’s voice.

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