William and Kate by Christopher Andersen

Author:Christopher Andersen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gallery Books

Later that day, Wills admitted to Kate that he felt their ongoing charade was “ridiculous.” Within hours, they boarded a plane for yet another holiday together. This time, he promised her, things would be different.

One year after they were first photographed sharing an intimate moment on a ski lift, the couple returned to Klosters with a new, decidedly more open attitude about their romance. Now they held hands, whispered in each other’s ears, and playfully jostled each other in full view of the other skiers. During lunch at a village café, Kate unself-consciously plopped herself in Wills’s lap and wrapped her arms around his neck.

Since this March 2005 ski trip was ostensibly billed as a “stag week” for the altarbound Prince of Wales, Kate’s mere presence among the thirty-odd guests was significant. All the more revealing was the ease with which she interacted with the male members of the Royal Family, especially Charles and Harry.

In the absence of his girlfriend Chelsy Davy, who had not been invited, the Spare needed some cheering up. At Klosters’ Casa Antica, once a favorite hangout of Diana’s, Harry drowned his sorrows in Red Bull mixed with vodka. Chelsy’s absence notwithstanding, the soused prince insisted on telling every girl in the room that he did not wear underwear—an admission that prompted their friend Guy Pelly to strip down to his black silk boxers and take to the dance floor.

Oblivious, William and Kate drank wine, snuggled in a corner, and, when the mood struck them, clung to each other on the dance floor. The mood was so mellow that, when a reporter for the Sun asked if he and Kate would also be thinking of marriage, he didn’t hesitate to answer. “Look, I’m only twenty-two, for God’s sake,” he blurted. “I’m too young to marry at my age. I don’t want to get married until I’m at least twenty-eight or maybe thirty.”

The offhand comment would prove to be prophetic. Right now, all eyes were on someone else’s wedding—one that had been delayed for thirty-five years. The wedding of Charles and Camilla had been problematic from the beginning.

With polls showing that fully 93 percent of the British people did not want Camilla to be their queen, Charles pledged that when he became king, she would become the country’s first “princess consort.” (It would turn out to be an empty promise, since he has no choice in the matter, according to English law, Camilla automatically becomes queen when Charles becomes king.)

Charles had made another promise not only to his future subjects, but to his sons. Out of respect for the memory of Diana, not to mention the public’s enduring resentment toward Camilla for her role in destroying Diana’s marriage, Charles’s new wife would not be known as Princess of Wales. Instead, she would settle for a lesser title that Diana had also held: Duchess of Cornwall.

Then there was the matter of the ceremony itself, which had to be shifted from Windsor to city hall—Windsor Guildhall—because the castle itself could not legally be used for a wedding.

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