William, Kate anniversary: How the ecstatic prince reacted when the college hotty got single at last
Prince William and Kate Middleton celebrated their ninth wedding anniversary on Wednesday, April 29.
Let's look back at the royal couple's relationship on the occasion. Their wedding might have been something straight out of a fairytale but their journey of getting to the altar, however, was anything but smooth.
After being first introduced at St Andrew’s University, the pair remained friends for their first year at college in 2001. At the time, Kate was dating one Rupert Finch. However, journalist Oliver Marre wrote in 2007 that William and Kate's situation transformed in the second year of their student life.
“William and Kate were no more than friends and it was in that capacity that they started living together in 2002, with two others, away from the university's own student accommodation. Kate was going out with a bloke called Rupert Finch. Soon afterward, though, they split up and I remember William saying that he thought he might ‘have a go’," he wrote.
After Kate broke up with Finch, who was a fourth-year student, she volunteered to take part in a catwalk for her friend. During the fashion show, she wore a transparent dress which put her underwear on display.
“[Kate] did the walk, she caught William’s eye and it was like something had just got off in his brain. He suddenly noticed that this rather cute and charming girl who he’d got to know over lectures and breakfast was actually a real hotty," royal expert Katie Nicholl claimed in the 2011 documentary, 'When Kate met William: A Tale of Two Lives'.
Speaking in the same documentary, the designer of the outfit that Kate wore on the runway, Charlotte Todd, said that the dress was created for the "art of seduction". She claimed that the outfit was “quite apt” because Kate may “have known what she was doing” by wearing that dress.
“It shows confidence to show your underwear in front of people, and knowing that a Prince is there as well, I think that she may have known what she was doing. Whether she did or not, it worked," she said.
Nicholl wrote in her 2011 book, ‘The Making of a Royal Romance’, that William decided to make a move on his future wife after witnessing the spectacle that was Kate, during the fashion show. However, when he did make a move, the future king of England was rejected as Kate claimed that William had displayed a "cold" behavior in front of their other friends.
However, an insider said that Kate was “playing it very cool”, and it “was clear to us that William was smitten with Kate”. “She didn’t want to give off the wrong impression or make it too easy for Will," Nicholl said.
They did begin to date eventually but even then problems arose in their relationship, like most couples, and they briefly split up in 2007. When they reunited again, they promised each other that they will settle down together. William proposed Kate on October 20, 2010, which was formally announced to the world on November 16 in the same year. This was followed by a lavish wedding ceremony at Westminster Abbey the following year.