The Unofficial British Royal Family Pages

Tuesday 6 April 2004

LOYALTY, Thy Name is... William?

Sometimes, despite all the bad news floating around, a story emerges that makes you feel pretty good about things. That happened a few days ago with the revelation that Prince William is seeing Kate Middleton.  Hard to believe, but it turns out that despite being surrounded by sycophantic idiots most of the time, William actually has a discerning eye when it comes to finding love.  And she isn’t posh.  Well yes she is, but not nauseatingly so, and frankly that’s good enough for me.  Actually, just the fact that her first name isn’t followed by two additional, hyphenated surnames is a big plus!  Then you have the fact that she is a university-educated woman on the brink of earning a degree from a very respectable school. Her parents are upper middle class people who own their own company, and apparently she comes from a stable family.  But that isn’t even the best part.  The best part is that the girl is a real friend to Prince William.  I’ll say it again: a real friend. 

I’ll tell you, real friendship in this day and age is sometimes a hard thing to come by.  But for a person in William’s position, it’s about as common as finding a needle in a haystack.  For two years, people have speculated that Kate Middleton would eventually get together with William.  Why? Because she really is discreet, she really is unassuming, and she really is loyal.  (I would mention that she is also exceptionally pretty, but that would make me very shallow indeed, so I will not go there.)  In point of fact, why would I discuss anything after the “loyalty” part?  What quality could possibly be more important to a man who himself champions that trait so relentlessly in others? 

But Houston--we have a problem.  Almost as soon as the Sun’s article appeared on Thursday, you could hear the cobbling together of the requisite “counter-story.”   This time the counter-story involves a very posh girl who resides in London but hails from Kenya.  Her name is “Jecca” Craig and she was linked to Prince William last summer.  Now it emerges that William is off to Kenya this summer (sans Kate) to see “Jecca” on her father’s sprawling ranch.  Jecca you see is considered by some to be prime girlfriend material.  After all, she has two primary residences, one very strange name, and fifty thousand acres of land.  I’d go so far as to suggest that the press is half hoping that William will go to Africa without his darling Kate, just to mix things up a little. I would suggest that, but it would be an unfair accusation, as we all know how honorable the press’ intentions are. Cough. 

Anyway, what more could a prince want than lots of pretty girls available to date him? Well, we already know what William wants. William wants LOYALTY. We saw that in his press call in September of 2000 where he denounced Patrick Jephson’s book about his beloved mother Princess Diana.  Then when Paul Burrell, (who had been accused of stealing private correspondence between Diana and William), wrote a tell-all about Diana’s life last October, William issued a very strong public rebuke for Burrell’s disloyalty.  Moreover, he’s been known to set up “friends” whom he suspects of talking to the press.  Once he is convinced he’s caught the blabbermouth, they’re cut off without a word.  Therefore, let there be no mistake that while dating lots of lovelies is a nice idea in the abstract, loyalty from others is the trump card. 

Right, then. What’s the problem? The problem lies with how we define “loyalty”.   William could surely tell you what loyalty isn’t. So let’s take it from that angle.  For instance, it’s not pulling a ‘Paul Burrell’, proclaiming in a message for the boys during a press call following his acquittal, “I will never betray certain things between us…” and then writing a book six months later.  And, it’s not ringing up the press to talk about things that are supposed to be private.  It’s not ingratiating yourself to the royal family in order to curry favor or gain fame by virtue of your association with them. And it’s not…forgive me for saying so…leaving your girlfriend in the lurch to go pull some other posh babe over the summer. See that?  Loyalty really is a tough nut.  

Now to be fair, seeing as my crystal ball is currently out for repairs, I don’t know if Kate Middleton and Prince William will end up together.  So I have to go on what I see, even if I discount what I read. And the fact is that these latest pictures from Klosters are not nearly the only ones out there that show Prince William gazing adoringly at Miss Middleton.  So give me some latitude while I purge from my mind the fact that we are talking about a young man who hails from a family that is now plainly notorious for making bad decisions in the marriage department; forgive me but I would prefer, if it’s all the same to the News of the World, to give this relationship a real chance at success.   

But who are the parties most responsible for that chance? Well, it would be convenient to say “the media”.  And yes, we all want the media to show a modicum of discretion and try not to bother the couple too much.  Instead, let them go forward and develop this friendship.  If it leads to marriage, that’s great.  We’ll all have a royal wedding to look forward to and maybe by then Arthur Edwards will be allowed to attend the photo call. (Prince Edward can supervise the taking of the pictures, of course). But more importantly, it’s up to William and Kate.  I think we all know that Kate has been offered quite a bit of money to talk about the Prince. And I think we all know that she hasn’t.  And I think we can all guess that no matter what the future holds for her and William, she won’t.  Now that’s loyalty.  So you know what I would like to see?  I’d like to see Prince William spend as much time thinking about how he shows loyalty towards Kate, as he spends thinking about how others have shown disloyalty towards him.  After all, it’s a special friend who stands two years by his side without getting either intoxicated by the media attention, or so disgusted with it that she catches the next train to Edinburgh; a special friend with whom he has apparently developed a rather special bond.  A word to the wise on special bonds: They don’t come around very often.  So allow me to close by observing a couple of truisms.  The first is that loyalty begets loyalty.  And second, that not only is loyalty a tough nut, but it’s also a two way street.

- Elizabeth W. King