Prince William Gives 6-Word Reason Why He Once Broke Up With Kate Middleton

The Gist

• Prince William and Kate Middleton are 15 years into a successful marriage following their royal wedding on April 29, 2011.

• The two met in 2001 as first-year college students and eventually began dating; then, in 2007, William surprisingly broke up with Kate for a short period of time.

• Longtime royal photographer Arthur Edwards said William told him in just six words why he briefly ended their relationship.

After Prince William and Kate Middleton met as first-year college students at the University of St. Andrews in 2001, they became friends, then roommates, then romantically involved. The two were together for around five years when, in 2007, William unexpectedly broke up with Kate in what has been described by royal biographer Robert Jobson as “an emotionally-charged 30-minute conversation” over the phone.

“It was a devastating blow to Catherine, who felt doubly let down at being dumped over the phone,” Jobson wrote in his 2024 biography Catherine, The Princess of Wales, noting that the two “both acknowledged they were on ‘different pages.'”

In a new interview with longtime royal photographer Arthur Edwards on Hello!‘s “A Right Royal Podcast,” the lensman shed light on the reason for the surprising split, which only lasted a few months until the couple got back together over the summer of 2007. They ultimately tied the knot in 2011 and marked 15 years of marriage this past April.

Edwards spoke to William after he and Kate announced their engagement in 2010. “When they got engaged, there was a couple of us invited in to meet Catherine,” Edwards said on the podcast. “I asked him, ‘What did you break up for?’ He said, ‘Because I wanted to be sure. Because I want this marriage to last forever.'”

“And I think it will,” Edwards continued. “He had learned from his own parents’ broken marriage.”

In an engagement interview on November 16, 2010, William and Kate addressed their brief breakup themselves, with William telling ITV’s Tom Bradby, “To be honest, I wouldn’t believe everything you read in the paper, but in that particular instance we did split up for a bit.”

“We were both very young, it was at university, we were both finding ourselves as such and being different characters and stuff, it was very much trying to find our own way, and we were growing up,” he said. “It was a bit of space and a bit of things like that, and it worked out for the better.”

Kate added, “I think at the time I wasn’t very happy about it, but actually it made me a stronger person. You find out things about yourself that maybe you hadn’t realized. I think you can get quite consumed by a relationship when you are younger, and I really valued that time for me as well, although I didn’t think it at the time.”

Edwards said on the podcast that he can remember being at Sandringham—”not Christmas Day, just a normal day,” as he put it—and he saw Kate before the world really realized who she was and what she meant to William. “I was standing around the back where William was out there with some mates from university,” Edwards explained. “And a group of them came out, and I took a picture. It was only like 10 years later, maybe more, I looked at that picture and I realized one of them was Catherine. You would not have recognized her.”

“That girl that day, you would never have recognized that one day she’d be a Princess of Wales,” he added.

After their breakup in 2007, Edwards’s wife Ann noticed that Kate was sitting in the Royal Box with William at the Concert for Diana that summer. “Ann said to me, ‘Look over there,”” Edwards said. “And there was Catherine and William in deep conversation. She said, ‘I think it’s back on, you know.’ And it was.”

At their engagement photocall over three years later, “I spotted [Princess] Diana’s ring and I said, ‘I need to get a picture of that,'” he continued. “They called me out afterwards, and I went in the room to photograph it, and her hand was shaking with nerves! I said, ‘Oh, hang on, hold it steady, just ’til I get the ring sharp.’ Anyway, it was good.”

“I wished them all the best, and they were incredibly happy,” Edwards said. “Every time I see them now, they are a good team.” He added, “I think we’re very, very lucky that we’ve got them. I wasn’t sure about William as he was growing up. He hated the media, he hated the fuss. I remember once him begging me, ‘No more pictures, no more pictures.’ He hated it.”

“But I’ve seen him grow into a great statesman now,” he added. “I think he’s a great ambassador for our country, and so is she. I think they’ll be perfect. I see young [Prince] George doing very well, he’s going off to Eton now, looking like a fine, good looking young man. I think it’s in safe hands.”

He continued, “The job of being the sovereign of our country is a thankless task. You’re in this electronic goldfish bowl, everybody’s looking at you, everything you do, every illness you get. But William has done a great thing—he has protected his children. No paparazzi chase his children anymore; no one hangs out outside the school. It’s all stopped. What he suffered as a child, his children will not suffer. I think it’s in great shape, and we are very lucky we’re going to get him as king one day.”

Read the original article on InStyle