The Relationship Between William And Kate Has Changed – And It’s All Down To Harry And Meghan

It’s no surprise that Kate and William’s relationship has evolved, though, as they’ve been through plenty of ups and downs together. As fans know, the pair first met in 2001 while studying at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. Reportedly, William was first attracted to Kate when he saw her on the catwalk at a fashion show held for charity.

And while Kate had been friends with William at the time, their acquaintance is said to have merely been platonic. Then the first change came. When the future duchess wore a daring, completely sheer dress that showed off her underwear on the catwalk, William was apparently awestruck. According to Vanity Fair, the prince was even compelled to say to a friend, “Kate’s hot!”

Yes, an anonymous insider interviewed for Katie Nicholl’s 2010 book William and Harry has suggested that the catwalk moment transformed everything for William and Kate. As reported by Nicholl, that person claimed, “It was clear to us that William was smitten with Kate. He actually told her she was a knockout that night, which caused her to blush. There was definitely chemistry between them, and Kate had really made an impression on William.”

The source added, “[Kate] played it very cool, and at one point when William seemed to lean in to kiss her, she pulled away. She didn’t want to give off the wrong impression or make it too easy for Will.” If royal reporters had been around at that moment, who knows what they would have made of it?

There was yet another change, then, when Kate and William subsequently began dating. But it wasn’t always easy for the new couple to avoid press intrusion. In order to keep their relationship secret, the couple therefore left the house they shared with classmates at separate times. The pair were also careful about holding hands – especially when members of the public could see.

And Kate and William’s relationship changed yet again in November 2010 when the pair announced their engagement. They smiled in the official photographs to mark the occasion, too, even if the snaps were still quite formal and sedate. One image seemed to throw off all the royal trappings, however, and show Kate and William for what they were: a young couple in love.

In 2014 Mario Testino – the man who took the official engagement photos – told The Daily Telegraph that he hadn’t been “totally satisfied” with the pictures at first. His mind was somewhat changed, though, when he captured one touching moment between the royal couple. Testino explained, “When I’d finished the shoot, [Kate and William] were about to leave, and they suddenly hugged in front of a radiator. It was spontaneous emotion. You could see they were completely in love.”

Finally, ten years after they had first met, William and Kate were married in Westminster Abbey. It was a momentous occasion – one watched by millions of people around the planet. And while appearing on the balcony to wave to the gathered crowd, William gave a quick smooch to his new wife. Then, after onlookers shouted “Kiss her again” to the prince, he gamely complied.

Typically, royals don’t get overly passionate even at a wedding – and certainly not in the church. Before William and Kate’s marriage, the Very Reverend Dr. John Hall, Dean of Westminster, told Yahoo News, “There will be no kiss during the wedding ceremony. We don’t do that in the Church of England. That’s sort of a Hollywood thing, ‘You may now kiss the bride.’ It doesn’t happen here.”

In the run-up to the wedding, though, a number of newspapers reported that William and Kate had practiced their balcony kiss in advance. In an entirely unromantic move, the lip-lock was even apparently scheduled into proceedings. By contrast, the second kiss on the day appeared to be much more of a spur-of-the-moment thing.

And after the wedding, William and Kate settled into married life. They also started a family, with their first child Prince George coming along in 2013. But there was no kiss on the steps of the hospital when the two showed off their new arrival, even though they were most likely thrilled. Instead, they simply held George and smiled for the cameras. Royal watchers have also observed that as close as the couple seemed to be, they rarely showed it in public. Yet, as it turned out, there was a good reason for the royals’ restraint.

William and Kate chose not to show affection in public for one simple reason: they were at work. Just as a married couple may decide not to hold hands around the office, Kate and William didn’t do so when the cameras were on, either. After all, even when celebrating the birth of a new baby, they were representing the entire monarchy.

“The duke and duchess are almost always seen in photographs taken during official engagements, so they are at ‘work,’ and it would be unprofessional to hold hands,” HELLO!’s royal correspondent Emily Nash told the magazine in 2017. “They also need to shake hands with a huge number of people as they meet them, so aside from being on duty, it wouldn’t be very practical!”

“We know [the duke and duchess] are very affectionate and that sometimes comes across during more lighthearted moments, at sporting events or similar, but you wouldn’t expect them to put that on show while in more formal situations,” Nash went on. However, in 2017 that royal rule was suddenly broken. Prince Harry and his new wife Meghan, you see, were happy to show public displays of affection – otherwise known as PDA.

Harry and Meghan have been photographed holding hands many times, in fact, and they even shared a pretty intense-looking kiss during a charity polo match in July 2018. It was all quite unexpected, but the media loved it. “Meghan and Prince Harry holding hands at a royal engagement is a refreshingly modern approach to their new role both as a couple and as representatives of the royal family,” specialist in royal etiquette Myka Meier told People magazine in 2017.

Meier added that generally public affection is “simply a matter of preference for each couple and is also likely dependent on the nature of the event.” Though older royals like Charles and Camilla have sometimes been seen holding hands, “a more serious engagement would warrant a more serious level of professionalism, which each royal is sure to follow.”

It’s worth noting, of course, that said professionalism used to be somewhat austere. In a 2017 biography called Prince Charles: The Passions and Paradoxes of an Improbable Life, author Sally Bedell-Smith considered the affection – or lack of – that the Queen and Prince Philip have historically shown each other when in the public eye. She wrote, “In the manner of the upper class, neither of them were physically demonstrative.”

So, did Kate and William continue to maintain these standards, or has Harry and Meghan’s influence rubbed off on them? Well, in October 2018 the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge surprised fans with some PDA of their own. Kate had recently returned from maternity leave after giving birth to Prince Louis and was accompanying William to London’s Global Ministerial Mental Health Summit. And during the event, William was spotted putting his hand on his wife’s back and later on her leg – a rare occurrence indeed for the royal couple.

But that wasn’t all. A few days after the summit, Kate and William attended the wedding of Princess Eugenie, and again they seemed to be getting much closer than normal. Reporter Kirsten Aiken wrote on Twitter, “Commentary team oohs and aahs over an apparently rare PDA by William and Kate (mind you, they’re only holding hands!).”

Judi James, a body language interpreter, also had something to say about Kate and William’s behavior. “They managed to outdo Harry and Meghan here,” she told the Daily Mirror. “Kate reached across to place a hand on the arm of her husband’s chair, and he put his own hand over it in a very romantic gesture.”

And James analyzed the body language on display at the summit too. “Kate seems to have increased in confidence here at their first public outing together since the birth, and William is unusually tactile, flashing some sweet “pinging” smiles at his wife to suggest he’s incredibly pleased to have her back at his side,” she said to another newspaper, the Daily Express.

But what could have triggered this change in the duke and duchess’ public relationship? Well, James suggested to the Daily Mirror that it may have been “prompted by the very tactile displays from Harry and Meghan.” Some royal watchers even thought that they may have been subtly trying to one-up them. A tweet after Princess Eugenie’s wedding, for instance, claimed that William and Kate were aiming to “upstage” the newer couple at the event.

There have been rumors of bad blood between the royals, too. In 2018, for instance, gossip magazines reported that Meghan and Kate had squabbled before the former actress’ wedding to Harry. According to anonymous sources, the origin of the conflict was Princess Charlotte’s bridesmaid dress; the disagreement, it’s said, also left Kate in tears.

And Kate and Meghan’s alleged feud continued to make headlines. In November 2018, in fact, it was reported that Harry and Meghan were moving out of Kensington Palace – and thus away from William and Kate. An anonymous source further claimed to the Daily Mail that a rift between the royal women was the cause of said relocation.

Furthermore, the supposed “close friend of the Cambridges” told the publication that the two duchesses don’t see eye to eye. “Kate and Meghan are very different people,” they claimed. “They don’t really get on.” That same month, though, another source suggested to The Sun that the problem didn’t in fact lie with the royal wives; instead, it was actually William and Harry who were fighting.

Then in April 2019 Metro spoke to a body language specialist about one of William and Harry’s most recent public appearances. On that occasion, both princes had attended an engagement with environmentalist Sir David Attenborough – but although they had arrived in the same car, they’d immediately parted ways afterward.

With that in mind, Peter Clayton told Metro, “Normally when they arrive at an event, the brothers always walk together – even if it is behind their father. When they greet the organizers or supporters, they usually have a small laugh to ensure they approach the line smiling and looking jolly. But the behavior is now very different.”

Clayton continued, “If you didn’t see [William and Harry] step out of the car together, you would think they had arrived in separate cars – such is the distance between them. There isn’t any attempt to look at each other, and they appear to be intent on maintaining that distance.” Nevertheless, the body language guru added, “Whatever has happened, I hope they can put it behind them quickly, because I have always really admitted how the two princes have always stuck together and been such good friends.”

Regardless of such reports, however, only a few really know how the royals interact with one another behind closed doors. After all, that’s generally not the sort of information that Kensington Palace tends to release to the public. As a result, then, many perceptions of the Windsor clan come from – that’s right – their public displays of affection and their general body language towards one another.

Let’s take a look at this body language, then. For instance, when Kate and Meghan got together for Christmas 2018 with the rest of the royals, they appeared to be happy and smiling. But were they just hiding a dislike of each other for the cameras? Well, body language specialists thought not. “See how they’re laughing [and] how they’re all walking in sync?” expert Patti Wood told Marie Claire. “It’s really difficult to do that if you really, really don’t like somebody.”

Even the ways in which royals use their accessories apparently hold some significance. Take Kate as she appears in this photograph, for example. Here, she isn’t seen holding hands with William; instead, she is positioning her clutch bag between herself and her husband. But according to experts, this is actually a good sign when it comes to Meghan, who is walking on Kate’s other side. You see, it means that there is nothing coming between the sisters-in-law – in both a metaphorical and a physical sense.

“Kate has her purse in between her and Will,” Wood told Marie Claire. “I don’t typically like that, but I think because of the controversy in the media around her relationship with Meghan, she might just be making an effort to make sure that [the] relationship looks good and there’s no blocking or barrier between them.”

Yet rumors of a feud between Kate and Meghan persisted into 2019. Perhaps, then, this continued speculation drew none other than Sarah Ferguson to comment on the situation in February of that year. And in doing so, the Duchess of York – who was once set in competition against Princess Diana – drew attention to the often coarse nature of internet speculation. “It seems,” she wrote in an open letter for Hello magazine, “that online, anything goes.”

“Women, in particular, are constantly pitted against and compared with [one another] in a way that reminds me of how people tried to portray Diana and me all the time as rivals, which is something neither of us ever really felt,” Ferguson went on. “People feel licensed to say things online that they would never dream of saying to someone’s face. And that encourages others to pile in.”

It’s worth noting, too, that if there really is tension between Meghan and Kate – or between Harry and William for that matter – there has nevertheless been no concrete evidence of this as yet. There’s also no legitimate indication that anyone wants to upstage the other members of the family. Plus, if public displays of affection are an issue, then Charles and Camilla ought to be taken into consideration. In a photoshoot for the December 2018 issue of Vanity Fair, for example, Camilla is seen pictured with a hand on her husband’s leg.

What’s more, some royal commentators believe that Charles and Camilla may tweak the rules a little when Charles ascends to the throne. “Times have changed,” biographer Penny Junor told Good Housekeeping in 2018. “Charles is still so besotted with Camilla – even after all these years – that it would be hard for him not to show his natural affection.”

Still, Harry and Meghan are certainly the royal couple who seem the most comfortable with displaying affection in public. And things were no different during their recent Australasian royal tour. Indeed, Harry often held the hand of his pregnant wife while the pair were out and about. And even while clapping politely at events, Meghan had her arm wrapped around Harry’s.

Some people, however, even complained about the amount of personal contact between Harry and Meghan, reported The Sun newspaper. Apparently, for instance, a user of website Mumsnet said, “For the love of God, could they stop holding hands? They’re not on a date, they’re carrying out official business!”

Meanwhile, James suggested that William and Kate may also have grown closer due to the birth of Prince Louis. “Their smiles together have changed, and their affection and love signals are much more intense and open than ever before, suggesting the birth of their third child has somehow thrown them back into the honeymoon stage,” she told the Daily Express.

And they’re not the only ones, it seems. Harry and Meghan appear to be deliriously in love at every public appearance too. During their royal tour, they even ventured out alone while in New Zealand’s Whakarewarewa Forest for a private moment. There, Harry took a beautiful photograph of pregnant Meghan clutching her belly.

But although Kate and William are less demonstrative with their feelings, they still clearly adore each other. And a lack of regular PDA doesn’t definitively speak to what goes on behind closed doors. Besides, Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip are almost never seen touching, and they’ve been together for over 70 years!