Even before part two of season six of Netflix’s The Crown dropped on December 14, Marie Claire reported that it was always a part of Carole Middleton’s plans for her eldest daughter, Kate, to attend the University of St. Andrews and meet Prince William. Part two of the show’s final season depicts as much, with Carole pulling strings with her daughter to get her to be right in the line of sight of the future king. Obviously, the plan worked—William and Kate have been together for 20 years, half of their lives.
And, OK reports, Kate didn’t resist her mother’s grand idea, royal historian Clare McHugh said. “What is interesting to me is that The Crown did not shy away from showing Carole as insistent that Kate kept going,” McHugh said. “I think the only part where they faltered was when they had Kate resisting a bit.”
Kate was originally slated to attend the University of Edinburgh—her dream school—but rerouted her plans to attend the University of St. Andrews when it was announced that William had chosen that school to attend. She also took an unexpected gap year, just as William did (except his was planned), to line herself up perfectly with the prince. But it wasn’t just Carole who was committed to Kate snagging William, McHugh said: “The two of them were as one all along,” she said.
On The Crown, Kate is seen pushing back at Carole’s desire for her to date William, “but historical accounts don’t align with the adaptation,” OK reports. In an episode of the show, the character of Kate Middleton says to Carole Middleton “If that’s okay with you, because you’ve always had your sights on someone else for me [meaning William].”
McHugh said she was “quite sure” that “psychologically, Kate did not resist. They decided together.”
In her biography Kate: The Future Queen, royal expert Katie Nicholl wrote that “It seemed every girl in America wanted to come to St. Andrews to search out the prince. Kate would have read the papers. She would have known that William was going and that there was every chance they could be in the same program at the same time if she got a place to study there.”
Although William and Kate officially met when first-year college students, Nicholl writes that they had a chance encounter years before (though not the one depicted in The Crown, where Carole and Kate meet Princess Diana and William).
“Prince William, a left back on Ludgrove’s Colts team, came to St. Andrew’s [Kate’s prep school in Berkshire] to play a hockey match when he was nine years old,” Nicholl wrote. “William, like Kate, loved sports and was one of the best hockey and rugby players in his year. Of course, the arrival of the prince generated a flurry of excitement. It was the first time Kate had set her eyes on the young prince, but certainly not the last.”
Those close to Kate told Nicholl that, in fact, the connection between the current Prince and Princess of Wales might have actually started far earlier than has been thought to be true: “[Kate’s friends] said ‘Uh-uh, she didn’t meet him at [the University of] St. Andrews, she met him before she got there, while she was at school during her sixth form through some of her friends,’” Nicholl said in an interview. “‘They knew Prince William and Prince Harry, so there wasn’t any meeting.’ And that, for me, it changed everything.”
