Camilla Parker-Bowles Gave Kate Middleton Advice on “How to Hang Onto a Prince”—But Kate Struggled to Follow It

I mean, in all fairness, she would know: Queen Camilla apparently once gave Princess Kate advice on “how to hang onto a prince”—but Kate struggled to follow it, The Mirror reports.

The outlet writes that Kate once relied on her stepmother-in-law “for advice on how to make sure her relationship with Prince William stayed on track.” William and Kate met as freshmen at the University of St. Andrews in 2001; by 2003, they were a couple. (The official start of their 20-year plus relationship remains ambiguous, but by 2003, they were together.) Camilla met then Prince Charles in the early 1970s and, after both married, had an extramarital affair with him throughout the 1980s and 1990s. By 1996, both Charles and Camilla were divorced, and they eventually married in 2005, after William and Kate had been together for a couple of years.

Camilla “was on standby to give her [Kate] some much-needed advice in her early days of dating William,” The Mirror reports, giving Kate tips on how to make the relationship work inside the very nuanced royal fishbowl.

In his book Battle of Brothers: William and Harry—The Inside Story of a Family in Tumult, longtime royal expert Robert Lacey writes “Camilla had confided in Kate the secret of hanging onto a busy prince: fit your timetable—well, basically your whole life—around his.” 

Despite the tip, Lacey writes that it simply wasn’t possible for Kate to implement it, as William’s schedule was “un-fit-roundable.”

“After graduation, William was thrown into his royal duties, while Kate was reportedly left on the sideline,” The Mirror writes. William and Kate graduated from college in 2005; William wouldn’t ultimately propose until 2010. Those five years—trying to navigate a relationship with a royal in the public eye, while being fairly certain it would lead to marriage but not totally so (including a three-month breakup in 2007)—proved understandably tricky for Kate as she tried to find her way as a young adult.

“While Kate’s medium-to-long-term objective was quite simple—to lead William in handcuffs to the altar—for the time being, she had to devise her own independent career path as camouflage,” Lacey writes. “This was a matter of both personal and public tactics. In neither respect would it help Ms. Middleton to appear the slightest bit needy—and, of course, there was the ultimate unthinkable possibility that she might end up getting dumped.”

Despite their short-lived breakup, three years later—after more than seven years together—William proposed, and, 12 years of marriage under her belt, Kate could write her own rulebook on “how to hang onto a prince,” thank you very much.