With the birth of their first child just days away, William and Kate are about to embark upon the next chapter of their royal fairy tale, but in 2007, their romance almost fizzled out for good.
After weeks of looking unhappy in public, William called time on their four-year relationship and then headed straight to the nearest nightclub where he reportedly shouted “I’m free!” before being photographed groping a Brazilian fan’s breast.
But just three months later the couple were back together and planning to wed. Now, a new book has revealed the real reasons behind the royal reunion that caught almost everyone by surprise.
Kate by Marcia Moody details the events surround the break-up and the abrupt make-up, explaining why the couple split and what drove them back together.
Moody says the first sign there was trouble in paradise was in March 2007, when the couple couldn’t raise a smile as they attended the Cheltenham festival, the same event they’d kissed publicly at the year before.
“A rot had set into their relationship,” Moody writes. “There was no longer any disguising the fact that William was unsure of his future with Kate.”
Kate looking tense on the phone shortly before the split and with William at Cheltenham.
The couple — whose romance blossomed at university — was clearly facing a crossroads in the months after re-entering the real world.
When William’s father Charles was facing a similar impasse in his relationship with Diana, Prince Philip told him he needed to end things or get married. Charles proposed and William saw first-hand how disastrously that ended.
When it came to his own relationship stalemate, William inevitably went the other way, keen to avoid the same fate as his parents, Moody writes.
William was initially thrilled with his decision, partying and playing polo with gay abandon. Kate was devastated, but didn’t show it. She put on sexy dresses and hit the social scene like never before.
Kate in one of her sexy dresses during her brief split from William.
The newspapers were full of photos of her looking tanned and terrific and appearing to have a time of her life, despite friends saying she was “very down”.
“Instead of weeping at home, she kept herself busy. She said yes to a slew if invitations and, in public at least, appeared more vibrant and sociable than she had been for a some time.
“Kate was still only 25, a single girl with the world at her feet. Although she was heartbroken, she wasn’t going to show it. Her dresses grew shorter, her tops lower.”
Ironically, given it was his father’s mistake that led William to dump Kate in the first place, it was another of Charles’ mistakes that drove the couple back together.
At the time, Charles was happier than ever after finally marrying the love of his life Camilla, the woman he failed to marry when they dated in their 20s.
The spectre of this error hung over the rest of Charles’ life, ruining his subsequent marriage and breaking up his family, and William worried the same fate awaited him if he let Kate get away.
“William didn’t want to make the same mistake,” Moody writes. “He had broken her heart and she wanted to make sure that if they did get back together, it would be for the right reasons and that things would change.”
He started trying to win Kate back and by June 9, they were a couple again.
Two months later, William whisked Kate away to the Seychelles. During that break they made a pact that they would one day be husband and wife.
Their commitment to each other hasn’t wavered since that day. They got engaged three years later, married in April 2011 and are now just days away from starting a family of their own.
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