Remember a few months ago when Prince William hired divorce lawyers and everyone was worried that meant he was, you know, getting a divorce? But then, at the time, the move was merely spun as him trying to break away from his father by hiring new representation, and since he and Kate seemed to be doing well, everyone accepted it. Well, new reports are today surfacing about a different time when the two split, which puts that rumored troubled time in their marriage into perspective.
Back in 2007, Prince William and Kate Middleton famously split and then got back together. And on Valentine’s Day 2008, William was determined to show Middleton that he was serious about their relationship. At least that’s what Grant Harrold, King Charles III’s former butler, says in his memoir, The Royal Butler: My Remarkable Life in Royal Service.
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“When they got back together, it was fresh, it was like a double boost,” Harrold wrote. “They both were making more of an effort. … [They had] this romantic dinner for Valentine’s Day, which they asked me to do, which they had never done before. They hadn’t done anything like that before. Suddenly, they wanted to do that. I felt that [William] was saying, ‘Look, I’m serious. This is going to up a level.’ That’s what I felt.”
“And, of course, a few years after that, they carried on,” Harrold added, “It was almost like a reset button, but this was serious. The first time around, it was boyfriend-girlfriend, ‘Oh, let’s eat here, let’s chill here, let’s do that.’ Suddenly, it was a bit more, ‘I’m serious, and I’m going to show you I’m serious.’ That’s how it came across, which was amazing.”
The Royal Butler: My Remarkable Life in Royal Service
The butler recalled how he had offered a formal dinner for the couple ever since they went public in 2004, but they always laughed it off. But when Valentine’s Day 2008 approached, William suddenly said, “OK, let’s do a dinner, if you’re happy to.”
“I felt truly honored and delighted that William had taken me up on my offer,” Harrold wrote. “Even though it was a typically chilly February evening, we planned for it to be outside the main house, at the best of the Thyme Walk, the stunning avenue of clipped golden yew and herb bushes bound on two sides by a pleached hornbeam hedge that leads down to the lily pond at the bottom.”
Harrold worked for the King’s household from 2004 to 2011. “I left after they got married, so at least I got to actually see that part of their lives,” he said. “And it was a good time also to have left because they left Highgrove. My role would [not have] been looking after them anymore, and I loved looking after them.”
Prince William and Kate Middleton weren’t broken up for long in 2007, and after they reconciled, the relationship got stronger, and eventually the two went on to marry in 2011 and today have three kids together. And though they have had to contend with plenty of divorce rumors since then, as happens to many couples in the spotlight, it seems like they are stronger than they’ve ever been.
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