London - He chose the moment to announce his engagement, and now he’s chosen the date of the wedding.
If the grimaces on the faces of some courtiers are anything to go by, Prince William is getting married his way, not their way.
There may be soaring anthems and heads of state, gilded carriages and ecstatic crowds, but William is emphatic that his wedding to Kate Middleton must feel like a marriage of two people in love, rather than a state occasion where the pomp outstrips the romance.
“Nothing troubles him more than the thought of the Middletons feeling overwhelmed by the occasion,” says one of his circle.
“To him, the joy of Kate’s family on her wedding day is more important than his own family’s.”
So far, everything has gone according to plan – William’s plan. In particular, he refused to listen to official and family voices urging him to have a glorious summer wedding. He was determined to get married as soon as possible and if that meant running the risk of April showers, so be it.
His reasons were simple – he and Kate have been together for so many years it would have been “absurd” to have a long engagement.
There can be no clearer indication of what is in the future king’s mind. If he doesn’t set a precedent of doing things his way now, he’ll never be able to do so in the future.
In palace corridors they are waspishly describing William’s uncompromising manner as a “clash of Wills”. But there is much admiration for the positive way he has taken charge of the big decisions since he and Kate got engaged.
On one point only has he backed down. It was his first instinct to be married in the charming St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle, where Prince Charles and the former Mrs Camilla Parker-Bowles received a blessing from the Archbishop of Canterbury after their Guildhall register office wedding in 2005.
“If it’s good enough for my father, it’s good enough for me,” was William’s view. Many will find his reason for abandoning that idea surprisingly poignant – he felt it would upstage his father, whose marriage to Camilla was a modest affair.
For a while there was dismay in official quarters that William’s renowned stubbornness might win the day. In palace circles, they say the only people he listens to are his grandparents, the queen and Prince Philip.
And it seems he was persuaded to agree to Westminster Abbey when he learned how delighted they would be if he and Kate were to marry in the place where they wed 63 years ago, on November 20, 1947. He arranged for Kate to look at the abbey, and she loved it.
The queen’s influence may even have been a factor in William giving Kate his mother’s iconic sapphire and diamond engagement ring. For it wasn’t Charles or Diana who chose that ring in 1981 but the queen, secretly selecting it from a tray of rings brought to the palace.
Already it is clear that Prince William does things his way. Clearly, this is setting down a marker for the kind of king he will be. Since his teenage years, William’s single-mindedness has kept him on course, even during those hazardous days when he might have been persuaded to fall in with roistering friends and do foolish things – drugs, for example – which characterised the growing-up years of his brother Harry.
William has always had immense self-control and assurance.
“No one knows better than the queen how much stronger William is than his father,” says a palace figure. “He’s much more positive than Charles, who is always wringing his hands about this or that. He makes up his mind about something and then he does it.”
William’s empathy with his grandmother is at the root of plans on which palace aides are working, and which will give a surprising twist to the way Kate is perceived.
With that ring on her finger, it has been widely assumed she would be the “new Diana”. But, inspired by William’s preferred understated style, Kate is to be presented as the “new Elizabeth”, more in the manner of the young queen in the tough post-war period than the glittering fairy princess Diana.
This will be a difficult trick, full of subtlety and emphasis on practicality and even economy.
It is no coincidence that the couple will more or less copy the life that Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip led after their marriage.
Elizabeth, then 23, went with naval officer Philip to live in Malta where the frigate he commanded, was stationed. They were in married quarters there for two years.
William and Kate will similarly put down roots in North Wales where the prince, a search-and-rescue helicopter pilot, is stationed.
Typical of William’s royal style, the cottage where they live has no domestic staff and they share the shopping and the chores.
At the same time, although the queen is paying for the wedding reception as well as the abbey service, the music, the flowers and the honeymoon, William insisted that his own staff lead the planning.
One reason for this was to ensure that Kate’s parents, Michael and Carole Middleton, were not excluded from the wedding plans.
They say when you marry you should start as you mean to go on. William is doing just that. - Daily Mail