Kate Middleton and Prince William have long been happily married, but once upon a time, the two went through a bit of a rocky period—which resulted in a brief yet dramatic breakup. The year was 2007, and the couple’s split was the talk of London. Arriving at a book launch event with her sister, Pippa, the future Queen of England (who was, at that point, simply William’s ex-girlfriend) came face-to-face with the royal gossip mill.
“[We were] in a group with Sebag Montefiore’s sister-in-law, the TV presenter Tara Palmer-Tomkinson, who sadly died a decade later at the age of 45,” wrote Richard Eden, who described the events for the first time today in the Daily Mail. “Tara, typically, got straight down to what everyone really wanted to know about: Catherine’s break-up with William.”
Palmer-Tomkinson asked Middleton a fairly tame question: “How are you doing?” to which Middleton replied, “Fine.” She then insisted, “‘It must be so hard…'” Eden wrote, and Middleton put her foot down, saying, “‘Really, it’s fine.'”
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“She made clear with her body language that she didn’t wish to discuss the subject, and the conversation moved swiftly on to happier and less fraught matters,” Eden recalled. “[That] first encounter with her taught me that she was a tough cookie who wasn’t going to be inveigled into saying something she didn’t want to say by anyone—not even a close friend of the royals.”
The actor then noted that, in retrospect, Middleton’s reaction provided “a hint of that inner steel which has stood her so well in the years since.”
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Middleton has had plenty of opportunity to tap into that “inner steal” in recent years, of course. Last spring, she endured months of speculation surrounding her health and whereabouts before finally revealing that she had been diagnosed with cancer. Her and Prince William proceeded to have the “hardest year” of their lives, according to the heir, and through it all, Middleton remained resilient.
“I’m so proud of my wife, I’m proud of my father, for handling the things that they have done,” William later said. “But, from a personal family point of view, it’s been, yeah, it’s been brutal.”