Royal Romances: Titillating Tales of Passion and Power in the Palaces of Europe (68 page)

In another modern shocker, Kate and William didn’t even jet off on an expensive honeymoon following the wedding reception. They enjoyed a private weekend at an undisclosed location before the new Duke of Cambridge returned to his RAF duties the following Tuesday morning. Although the twenty-room, four-story apartment in Kensington Palace once occupied by William’s great-aunt Princess Margaret is being renovated for the Cambridges, the refurbishment is not expected to be completed until 2013. Kate and William will be spending much of their first few years of married life in less-than-glamorous Anglesey, Wales, where the duke is completing his RAF
training. There they reside in a modest rented cottage without a staff of servants, and as newlyweds they had not initially intended to make any changes to that routine. According to royal biographer Katie Nicholl, Kate “loves cooking. They like to make British dinner parties. Their favorite dish is ‘toad in the hole’—[a] very fattening—keep-you-warm-in-the-winter” English comfort-food staple.

The young couple’s very normal lifestyle couldn’t be more different from William’s father’s standard of living. Prince Charles has a staff of 149, including a butler just to squeeze the toothpaste onto the royal brush.

All too aware of the media circus that surrounded Diana’s lonely and painful transition into The Firm, William remains highly protective of Catherine, and always expressed his intention to ease her conversion from commoner to princess as gently as possible. In this exercise of good old-fashioned chivalry, he has behaved like a prince, his birthright notwithstanding. But more than that, William once said, “My mother was the People’s Princess. I want to be the People’s King.” As he and Catherine are determined to be a very modern royal couple, how he manages to strike the balance between centuries of tradition and his own vision of modernity remains to be seen. The future of England’s monarchy is in their hands.

Acknowledgments

Perennial thanks to my agent, Irene Goodman, and my editor, Claire Zion, for their unflagging support for this fourth title in my nonfiction series of books on royal scandals and scandalous royals. As ever, I am also indebted to the most understanding husband on earth for accepting without a word of complaint the long hours and late nights it took to complete this opus, and for his ultimate display of support: He not only accompanied me to London for the royal wedding of Prince William to Catherine Middleton, but eased the journey with the purchase of extra frequent-flyer miles so that we could travel business class and arrive rested, knowing that I would be giving a number of media interviews that week. And, most gallantly of all, he awakened with me in the predawn hours on April 29, 2011, so that we could secure a prime spot on the Mall—and then, despite an aching back, remained standing beside me amid a fantastic, joyous sea of die-hard royal wedding watchers for eight hours straight so that I could derive the maximum enjoyment from the atmosphere as the events of the day unfolded.

This, dear readers, is a true romance.

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W
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S
ITES

The American Heritage
^®
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. S.v. “romance.” Retrieved November 14, 2010, from http://www.thefreedictionary.com/romance

http://www.officialroyalwedding2011.org/tag/homepage/page/3

Photo by Ron Rinaldi

L
ESLIE CARROLL is the author of several works of women’s fiction and, under the pen names Juliet Grey and Amanda Elyot, is a multipublished author of historical fiction.
Royal Romances
is her fourth foray into the field of historical nonfiction for NAL. She is also the author of
The Royals: The Lives and Loves of the British Monarchs
, a Barnes & Noble publication featuring facsimiles of historical memorabilia. A frequent commentator on royal romances and relationships, Leslie has been interviewed by MSNBC.com,
USA Today
, the Australian Broadcasting Company, and NPR, and was a featured royalty expert on the
CBS Evening News
broadcast from London during the royal wedding coverage of Prince William and Catherine Middleton. She also appears as an expert on the lives of Queen Victoria, Marie Antoinette, Catherine the Great, and Napoleon on Canada’s Proper Television documentary series
The Secret Life of….
Leslie and her husband, Scott, divide their time between New York City and southern Vermont.

CONNECT ONLINE

www.lesliecarroll.com