Table of contents for PEOPLE William & Kate: Future King & Queen in PEOPLE William & Kate

SAME GORGEOUS SPECTACLE. MUCH different world. When hundreds of millions of online and TV viewers—2 billion, by some estimates—tuned in on April 29, 2011, to watch Prince William wed his college sweetheart Kate Middleton, they knew what to expect. There would be the grandeur, age-old traditions and pomp and circumstance that have held the world rapt since Queen Elizabeth’s 1947 wedding to Prince Philip of Greece was broadcast live over the radio to 200 million listeners. And for sure, it was all there: the jaw-dropping dress, gleaming horse-drawn carriages, a flyover by the Royal Air Force and cheers for newlywed kisses on the balcony of Buckingham Palace. But there were also plenty of signs that this was not your nan’s royal wedding. The most obvious update to the House of…

IN LATE MARCH 2025 WILLIAM, PRINCE of Wales, heir to the British throne, touched down in Talinn, Estonia, and met with President Alar Karis, chiefly to discuss Western Europe’s ongoing support of Ukraine in its war against Russia. Then the prince donned camouflage fatigues and a beret—cutting a dashing figure in his role as colonel in chief of the Mercian Regiment, which is part of NATO’s eastern flank in Estonia. British troops are leading a multinational battle group there, the army says, “in order to enhance Euro-Atlantic security, reassure our allies and deter our adversaries.” William also took time for some softer diplomacy. He visited with Ukrainian families that had fled to Estonia over the past three years and met with a group of kindergartners, who bundled up in warm…

WHEN CATHERINE MIDDLETON entered the world on a snowy winter morning in the small Berkshire village of Reading, there was little to portend her royal destiny. Her parents, Carole and Michael Middleton, who met as British Airways employees (she a flight attendant; he a flight dispatcher), lived modestly but comfortably in a four-bedroom brick home. They were neither royal nor aristocratic, though Michael’s father, Peter, a pilot and flight instructor, flew in the cockpit alongside Prince Philip on the Duke of Edinburgh’s 1962 tour of South America. Carole’s roots were working-class: Her father drove a truck, and her mother was a London shop assistant. Their firstborn arrived on Jan. 9, 1982, five months before her future husband. But while Prince William was born into a world of pomp, splendor and…

FOR WILLIAM AND KATE’S THREE CHILdren, growing up in the public eye is a fact of life that began the moment they were born. Starting with a postpartum press photo-call, it grew to include a permanent rotation of charity events, international tours and ceremonies. But in the Wales household, public outings are exceptions, not the rule. Much of the time, George, Charlotte and Louis are being ferried to and from school by their parents, helping out with chores and gathering in the kitchen to cook dinners (pizza is a favorite) and decorate cakes. “It’s a normal, busy family home with kids running around and knocking things over,” a friend told People. “No airs and graces.” Influenced by Kate’s own happy, stable childhood in the English countryside, the couple are rewriting…

THE 41-GUN SALUTES OF ROYAL ARTILlery companies at the Tower of London and Hyde Park signaled a King for the 21st century. The huzzahs rose across Britain, and eyes misted over from Land’s End to John o’ Groat’s. Well-wishers pressed to the very gates of Buckingham Palace to read for themselves the placard that royal assistants hung out for the world to see last Monday eve: “Her Royal Highness the Princess of Wales was safely delivered of a son at 9:03 p.m. today. Her Royal Highness and her child are both doing well.” The 7-lb. 1½-oz. prince is expected someday to rule the United Kingdom. He has already commandeered the attention of his future subjects from such concerns as the Falklands War and Wimbledon. Even the newborn’s father, normally the…

BACK IN THE DAY, 1540, BRITAIN’S King Henry VIII had Thomas Cromwell advise him on a new bride, one who would become Queen as soon as they said their vows. (German-born Anne of Cleves was Henry’s pick; it didn’t work out, but she did get to keep her head.) Some 462 years later, Prince William, then a 19-year-old student at Scotland’s University of St. Andrews, sat with his own confidant, Eton buddy Fergus Boyd, at a college charity fashion show. It was there, in the spring of 2002, that he suddenly saw his classmate Kate Middleton, 20, in a new light. William had previously chatted up Kate at dorm parties—they both lived at St. Salvator Hall. But something was different as she strutted down the catwalk in a sheer lace…

BORN TWO YEARS APART, WILLIAM and Harry shared an extraordinary childhood in the world’s most famous family, even as they were set upon radically different paths as “the heir and the spare.” Pulled between two parents whose ill-fated marriage played out for the world to see, they faced the unthinkable with the 1997 death of their mother, Princess Diana. Through it all they were a pair—then a trio, after William married college sweetheart Kate Middleton. But cracks in the relationship emerged when Harry began his life with American actress Meghan Markle; the gap widened after Harry and Meghan settled in Santa Barbara in March 2020. “If they were in a room on their own, they would say they miss each other,” a source who knows both brothers told People. But…