Heavy is the head that wears the crown, or even the one that knows it’ll have to wear the crown in later life. As the firstborn son of the now-King Charles, Prince William has been groomed since birth to be the future monarch, which is probably what’s at the root of his infamously fractured sibling relationship with little brother Prince Harry. It’s not for nothing that Harry’s scathing autobiography was titled Spare.
It’s often forgotten now, what with his status as his father’s trusty right-hand man and heir to the throne, but the Prince of Wales wasn’t always the reliable figurehead for the Royals that he is today. Harry might’ve borne the brunt of the media’s scrutiny, but William had his own wayward youth, not to mention a deeply troubled and traumatic teens. According to one William-aphile royal expert, the well-polished prince we have these days is all thanks to one person, Kate Middleton.
Kate Middleton “saved” Prince William for the Royal family amid claims “her whole life is to make him happy”
When reflecting on how far William and Kate have come over their 20+ years of knowing each other — the future husband and wife first met at St. Andrew’s University in 2001 — Royal author Angela Levin (via The Mirror) went so far as to say that she believes Princess Catherine “saved” William from “a very difficult place” when they first got together. And the reason he was in that place was thanks to the Royal family.
“I think that Kate has helped save William,” Levin opined. “I think it was very difficult for him coming out of a dysfunctional family, losing his mum so young and I think he was in a very difficult place.”
William tragically lost his mother, Princess Diana, at the age of 15, which meant he had to be thrown into both a world of adulthood and a world of royal responsibility when he was still an adolescent. Levin believes it took until the prince met Kate several years later for him to really start to find his own identity away from his role in the Firm — as the Royal family is called by those in the know.
“She has really encouraged him. Her whole life is to make him happy, I think,” Levin continued. “She found things that really make him feel important and worthy rather than just going to cut ribbons. I think she has helped him to be a husband by introducing him to her own family a lot and spending time with a normal family and being a dad.”
This all paints Kate as the loyal and loving wife that she’s always been assumed to be, and William would no doubt say much the same as Levin himself if he wasn’t a) basically contractually bound not to get mushy in public because he’s a Royal and B) British. Even so, we’d like to think that William is just as devoted to making his wife happy as she apparently is him. Especially this year, as she has gone through her cancer diagnosis and treatment.
Based on what has been reported, Kate’s own family have been her “rocks” throughout her illness. The opposite of the Royals, the Middletons are widely known to be an extremely close-knit family unit, with William thought of as their “adopted son.” As we can see from the fact Harry and Meghan Markle have put an entire ocean between them and Buckingham Palace, the Royals are as dysfunctional a family as you can get. That crown on the king’s head may be bejeweled, but all that glitters is not gold.