🎙️ Voice is AI-generated. Inconsistencies may occur.
Queen Elizabeth II has spent a lot of time "supporting and nurturing" the relationship of Prince William and Kate Middleton to avoid seeing a repeat of Prince Charles and Princess Diana's turbulent marriage, a prominent biographer has revealed.
Andrew Morton is best known for his 1992 biography of the Princess of Wales titled Diana: Her True Story, which the princess privately collaborated on. In the year of her Platinum Jubilee, however, Morton has turned his attention to the queen and her 70-year reign.
His comment regarding the queen's involvement in the Cambridge's relationship comes a week after a false story was published online by French magazine Oh My Mag claiming that the royal couple had split, with Kate moving out of the marital home with their three children.
Following its publication, a spokesperson for Groupe Cerise, the owner of Oh My Mag, told Newsweek: "This story is indeed false and has been published by accident. We are taking it down momentarily."
William and Kate celebrated their eleventh wedding anniversary in April and have, since the false story's publication, made joint-appearances at the royal film premiere of Top Gun: Maverick and a Buckingham Palace garden party.
Morton believes that the queen's apparent fondness for Kate stems from respect that the young royal fell in love with William for himself, not who he is.
"The thing about Kate is the queen was impressed she adored and loved William for himself, and not for his title," the author told OK!
"She spends a lot more time supporting and nurturing the relationship between William and Kate than she did with Charles and Diana," he continued.
"It's pretty clear she wasn't going to make that mistake again."
The 96-year-old monarch's apparent desire to support the Cambridge's marriage is likely to stem from the turbulent events of the early 1990s that saw all three of her married children's relationships dissolve.
Princess Anne divorced her show jumper husband Captain Mark Phillips in 1992 and both Prince Andrew and Charles separated from their wives, Sarah Ferguson and Diana, in the same year. Their divorces followed four years later.
The queen referred to the year 1992 as her "annus horribilis" and her sorrow over her children's marriages was compounded by the devastating fire that destroyed parts of Windsor Castle that November.
Charles and Diana's separation and divorce saw the monarchy come under increased pressure and criticism from the public as each partner in the royal marriage used the press to air their grievances.
In 1994 Charles took part in a BBC documentary and authorized biography project with broadcaster Jonathan Dimbleby. In an interview the prince admitted that he had been unfaithful to Diana during the course of their marriage once it had become "irretrievably broken down."
In response to this, on the evening the broadcast was shown, Diana attended a gala at London's Serpentine Gallery wearing a daring short black evening dress that pushed Charles off the front pages the next day. The dress was dubbed the "revenge" dress for this reason.
In a more direct response to Charles' interview, the princess conducted her own a year later with the BBC's Panorama in which she addressed the prince's relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles saying, "there were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded."
These back and forths formed part of what the press called the "War of the Waleses."
In Morton's opinion, William and Kate's relationship seems to be a stronger union based on a solid and strategic foundation.
"Everything that happened [in William and Kate's relationship] was quite strategic, quite thought through, after a period of time," he told OK!
"In the beginning, nobody in the royal household expected for a second that a university romance with Catherine and William would continue for any time after they graduated, like most college romances which disintegrate under the intense scrutiny of jobs and geography.
After he left college, William had all kinds of jobs, to get a sense of the Britain he will take over. Catherine was left to go her own way, but she survived."
On the queen's assessment of William and Kate's more relaxed approach to their royal roles and the people they interact with, Morton says that the monarch would approve and it is a legacy of lessons learned from the life of Diana.
"She's not of that generation. [Not] as touchy-feely," he said.
"Diana very much was, that was part of her character instinctively, but the queen is still the queen after all. Certainly, as she said herself, lessons had to be learned after the death of Diana. I think we've seen her gradually breaking free from the past.
"The monarchy to me now seems more of a relaxed institution than it's ever been and I think that's down to the queen. There is still formality there, but it's much more relaxed than it was 50 years ago."
About the writer
James Crawford-Smith is a Newsweek Royal Reporter, based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on the British royal family ... Read more