Did Kate Middleton’s mum really set her up with Prince William? The Crown depicts Carole Middleton orchestrating the relationship, but in reality ‘Kate did not resist’, say royal experts
Released on December 14, the episodes take viewers back to Kate and William’s early courtship during their time at St Andrews University in Scotland.
At times, the show takes a hard detour from reality for entertainment purposes – like the scene where a 15-year-old Kate and her mother Carole Middleton are shown having a chance encounter with Prince William and Princess Diana on the streets of London. But that never happened.
But a royal historian also says that’s far from the only aspect of Kate and William’s relationship that was invented for The Crown.
Not only that, McHugh said that Kate and Carole worked together to capture William’s attention at university.
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“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.”
“The two of them were as one all along,” she added.
“If that’s OK with you,” Kate says, with a tone of irony. Carole responds by asking why it wouldn’t be, to which Kate tells her: “Because you’ve always had your sights on someone else for me.”
The scene has prompted tabloids to dub Carole “the British Kris Jenner”.
But McHugh said she is “quite sure” that “psychologically Kate did not resist”.
“They decided this together,” McHugh, a former newspaper reporter and magazine editor, said.
She also pointed to author and Vanity Fair royal correspondent Katie Nicholl’s reporting on the topic as further evidence.
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Nicholl wrote in her 2013 book, Kate: The Future Queen 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 programme at the same time if she got a place to study there,” Nicholl added.
“Carole set things up, and Kate took it the rest of the way,” Scobie added, painting a picture that the two were on the same page.
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“When you read the accounts, the very good accounts by Katie Nicholl and other people, you see that Carole Middleton really urged her daughter to play the long game,” McHugh said.
However the relationship started, McHugh said that it doesn’t detract from Kate and William’s marriage nor Carole’s love for her daughter.
McHugh described Carole as “ambitious” and “a really devoted mother” with “a pretty keen sense of how human beings operate, especially young people”.
Kensington Palace did not respond to request for comment. We were unable to contact Carole Middleton for comment.
- Netflix’s hit TV show about the British royals is not always rooted in reality – for instance, a teenage Kate Middleton and her mum Carole never ran into Prince William and Princess Diana in London
- ‘The British Kris Jenner’? The Crown depicts Kate resisting her mum’s plan for her to get together with the prince, but royal experts such as Omid Scobie claim she was in agreement