Prince William and Princess Kate famously met and fell in love during their time at St Andrews University. And on the day of their joint graduation, the Vice Chancellor made a prophetic comment
Prince William, Kate Middleton and their proud families were in attendance for the couple’s joint graduation ceremony at St Andrews University in 2005.
And during the proceedings, they listened to a speech from the Vice Chancellor which proved particularly prophetic for the Royal Family. William and Kate famously first met at the university as students and graduated on the same day in June, with the late Queen, Prince Philip, Prince Charles and Camilla, among the audience. Both achieved an upper second class degree, William in Geography and Kate in Art History.
On the day of their graduation, Vice Chancellor Brian Lang addressed the students and – as revealed in Katie Nicholl’s biography Kate: The Future Queen – made a telling remark.
Prince William pictured on his graduation day in June 2005 (
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Getty Images)
He said: “You will have made lifelong friends. You may have met your husband or wife. Our title as the top matchmaking university in Britain signifies so much that is good about St Andrews, so we rely on you to go forth and multiply.”
Little did he know how ‘prophetic’ those words would become years later, Ms Nicholl wrote, with William and Kate going on to tie the knot in 2011.
According to Katie Nicholl in her 2010 book William and Harry, William noticed Kate as soon as he arrived on campus. The boys in their dorm, St. Salvator’s (nicknamed Sally’s), had unofficially crowned Kate as the prettiest girl there.
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And while routinely bumping into each other in class – both were studying art history at the time – and around Sally’s, Kate and William discovered they had things in common, including a love of swimming and skiing. Within weeks, Kate and William, alongside their new university friends, were having breakfast together.
The late Queen, Prince Philip, then-Prince Charles and Camilla were all in the audience for the ceremony (
Image:
AFP via Getty Images)
The couple later spoke about the start of their relationship when they sat down for their engagement interview in November 2010. Tom Brady asked the pair: “When did you first set eyes on each other and what did you think?” William replied: “It’s a long time ago now, Tom, I’m trying to wrack my brain. We obviously met at university – at St Andrews we were friends for over a year first and it just sort of blossomed from then on. We just spent more time with each other, had a good giggle, had lots of fun and realised we shared the same interests and had a really good time.
“She’s got a really naughty sense of humour, which kind of helps me because I’ve got a really dry sense of humour, so it was good fun, we had a really good laugh and things happened.” Tom then asked Kate, “What did you think of William? It’s clearly not quite the same as meeting your average university student, or maybe it was, what was your first impression?”
The future Princess confessed: “Well I actually think I went bright red when I met you and sort of scuttled off, feeling very shy about meeting you. Actually William wasn’t there for quite a bit of the time initially, he wasn’t there for Freshers Week, so it did take a bit of time for us to get to know each other but we did become very close friends from quite early.”
