It’s a sad but true fact that the British royal family has never had a history of happy marriages. Just look at Prince Charles and Diana, or Princess Anne and Mark Phillips. And going much further back, everyone knows how many failed marriages Henry VIII accumulated!

Now, of course, Prince William could never have Kate Middleton beheaded. But the fact that the couple never seem to touch much may still set some alarm bells ringing. They don’t even hold hands! So is there trouble afoot for the young royals, or is there something else going on?

When Prince William and Kate Middleton tied the knot in 2011, their wedding looked like it had come straight out of the pages of a fairytale book. There was, however, still the odd cynical naysayer – not least because Kate, despite her family’s wealth and status, was still technically a “commoner.” And it didn’t go unnoticed.

As any scholar of even recent British history will no doubt know, Britain has always been very divided along class lines. And so people wondered, could a marriage between a normal, if wealthy, girl and the heir to the throne really work out?