What The Crown Got Wrong About William And Kate
One of television's most buzzworthy series has wrapped, with the arrival of the sixth and final season of Netflix's Emmy-winning royal drama "The Crown." Recounting the story of Britain's royal family over the decades, storylines in the quasi-fictionalized series have run the gamut, from Queen Elizabeth II's ascension to the throne to the tragic death of Princess Diana and everything in between.
A key plot in the sixth season was the budding romance between Prince William (portrayed by Ed McVey) and Kate Middleton (Meg Bellamy) while both attended Scotland's University of St Andrews. While the season offered a fascinating inside look at how the Prince and Princess of Wales came to become a couple, how much of what took place onscreen actually happened in real life? That question is one that has dogged "The Crown" since its debut, given series creator Peter Morgan's tendency to liberally blend historical facts with fabrications. "Some of it is necessarily fiction," Morgan told The New York Times. "But I try to make everything truthful even if you can't know if it's accurate."
That dilemma was certainly present in the final season's storylines involving the prince and princess — from their first meeting to their first kiss. As has been the case in previous seasons, the Will-and-Kate plot has indeed included some cleverly crafted flights of fancy, with scripted elements infused into actual events. Here's a look at just what "The Crown" got wrong about the royal couple.
They didn't randomly meet as teenagers
The Season 6 episode titled "Willsmania" takes a look at the pop star-like adulation that young Prince William experienced as a teenager. That was the case in one scene in which young Kate Middleton (Ella Bright) and mom Carole (Eve Best) are doing some Christmas shopping in London when Princess Diana (Elizabeth Debicki) and teen son Prince William (Rufus Kampa) arrive to promote charity magazine The Big Issue. Kate buys a copy from Diana, who thanks her for her generosity. Then, for a brief instant, William and Catherine gaze deeply into each others' eyes before reality intrudes.
It's a sweet and prophetic moment — and not how it all went down, according to the Princess of Wales herself. She recalled her first meeting during their 2010 engagement interview, telling William, "I think you said I actually went bright red when I met you and sort of scuttled off. [I was] feeling very shy about meeting you."
In addition, Middleton has also confirmed that she never had the opportunity to meet Princess Diana, despite the brief interaction between the two that's depicted in "The Crown." In a video filmed during one of her royal engagements in April 2023, Middleton was asked about her sapphire engagement ring. That ring, as royal watchers know, originally belonged to Diana. "I never, sadly, got to meet her," she said (via "Today").
Teenage Catherine didn't really have posters of William plastered on the wall of her bedroom
In the "Willsmania" episode of "The Crown," viewers see Princess Catherine, then known as Kate Middleton, in her bedroom after her fictional brush with Prince William. In that scene, she's cutting photos of William out of various magazines to make a collage with which to decorate her walls.
"The Crown" wasn't the first to present this idea. In the book "Kate: The Future Queen," royal expert Katie Nicholl wrote that Princess Catherine's boarding-school dorm roommate, Jessica Hay, claimed that Catherine had such a big crush on William that she adorned the walls of their shared dorm room with posters of the prince. "There's no one quite like William," Catherine would apparently proclaim, according to Hay's account (via Marie Claire).
While that certainly wouldn't have made Catherine unique among British young women, the Princess of Wales has insisted that her bedroom walls were not festooned with photos of the dashing young prince. In fact, that question came up in the couple's 2010 engagement interview. "There's a story that goes around that you had a picture of him on your wall as a child," interviewer Tom Bradby of ITV News mused. "It wasn't just one, it was like 10, 20," William quipped. "He wishes!" Middleton retorted. "No, I had the Levi's guy on my wall. Not a picture of William. Sorry."
According to a royal expert, Prince William and Catherine actually knew each other before university
According to the timeline in "The Crown," Prince William and Princess Catherine had a brief encounter as teenagers before formally meeting each other while both attended the University of St Andrews. While it's been established that the teen experience was fictional, it also isn't entirely true that the future spouses met for the first time in Scotland.
In fact, Katie Nicholl, author of "Kate: The Future Queen," has insisted that they met prior to college — although they didn't know each other particularly well at that point. "Kate was at Marlborough school in Wiltshire, and was mixing in those sorts of very high society country circles," Nicholl told Time. "During one of those meetings, I was told by a very reliable source that she was introduced to William in a very casual and informal setting."
Nicholl explained that, given the nature of the upper-crust groups in which they both moved, it would have been unlikely that the prince and his future bride wouldn't have brushed shoulders at some point along the way. "They had friends in common, they went to neighboring schools that played sports against each other, they grew up in the home counties," she said, referring to the various counties that surround London, in which the posh country estates of British aristocrats are typically situated. In fact, Catherine grew up in Chapel Row, a village in Berkshire — the same county in which Windsor Castle resides.
The timing of William's press conference was off by a few months
Another scene in the sixth season of "The Crown" that blended fact with fiction is the press conference that Prince William gave on his 18th birthday, held at Highgrove House, the home of his father, then-Prince Charles (played by Dominic West). During his conversation with reporters, William revealed he was taking a gap year before entering university. Compared to the video of the actual press conference, it's clear "The Crown" provided a fairly faithful representation of what he said about his plans to spend that gap year in South Africa before attending the University of St Andrews the following year.
What wasn't accurate, however, was the timing of the event itself. "The Crown" depicted William speaking with the press on the occasion of his 18th birthday. In reality, though, that press conference was held some three months after he turned 18.
So what was William actually doing on the day of his birthday? A CNN report from the time explained that while the royal family was hosting a huge party at Windsor Castle to celebrate a spate of royal birthdays — including William's 18th and the Queen Mother's 100th — he was not in attendance. Instead, he was holed up in his dorm room at Eton College, cramming for his final exams. Of particular note was his art history exam, scheduled to take place the following day.
There's no proof of Catherine's mother scheming to bring them together ... but there have been rumors
One character woven throughout the storyline of Prince William's romance with Catherine in "The Crown" is her mom, Carole Middleton, who is implied to have not just encouraged her daughter's relationship with William but actually engineered it. On the show, Carole convinced her daughter to take the same gap-year trip as William, missing each other by weeks. Then, she similarly convinced Catherine to switch from the University of Edinburgh — where she originally wanted to go — to St Andrews, where William would be attending.
That depiction is backed up by Tina Brown's 2022 book "The Palace Papers." "It is unlikely Kate would be where she is today without her mother's canny help in negotiating a royal romance," Brown wrote (via Harper's Bazaar). Interestingly, a 2007 Daily Mail report offered a similar characterization: "Mrs. Middleton has acquired a reputation for being pushy and it has been suggested she maneuvered her daughter into William's orbit and then tried to engineer a match."
However, as USA Today pointed out, those reports rely entirely on anonymous sources, with no concrete proof that Carole was the unseen force behind her daughter marrying William. Additionally, as royal commentator Claudia Joseph told Time, "The fact that they're painting Carole as this avaricious matriarch who is determined that her daughter married or dated Prince William is not believable. You can't engineer a romance."
William did have a girlfriend before Catherine, but she wasn't the one depicted in The Crown
In the "Alma Mater" episode of "The Crown," Prince William bumps into the future Princess of Wales in the University of St Andrews library when he discovers she's checked out the only copy of a book he needs to read for their class. They get to talking and sparks fly between them. That magical moment, however, is interrupted by the arrival of William's jealous girlfriend, Lola Airdale Cavendish Kincaid. Later in the episode, it's revealed that Catherine is also seeing someone, a student named Rupert Finch, aka "Finchie."
Like much of "The Crown," this part of the story is both true and false. Rupert Finch is a real person whom Catherine did indeed date. "It's not something I'll ever talk about," Finch discreetly told the Daily Mail back in 2006. "It's between Kate and me and was a long time ago." It's also true that Prince William had a girlfriend before Catherine — but it wasn't Lola, who is an entirely fictional creation.
According to The Standard, William previously dated Carley Massy-Birch, whom he met when he auditioned for a play. "She went out with William for six or seven weeks when they first arrived at St Andrews," Massy-Birch's mother confirmed in an interview with the Daily Mail in 2008. "But there's absolutely no fall-out between her and Kate. In fact, all three of them are best friends. ... She really wants Kate to marry Wills so that she can be sure of going to the wedding."
William and Catherine were actually friends for more than a year before they began dating
While the timeline of the relationship between Prince William and Catherine isn't explicitly delineated on "The Crown," things on the show appeared to move a lot faster than they did in real life. According to the show, the future spouses both met during their first year at St Andrews in the fall of 2001, and seemingly got together after that infamous fashion show in March 2002.
While "The Crown" positions the two as a full-fledged couple after that — with Catherine even inviting William to meet her parents during the Golden Jubilee in June — the reality was somewhat different. As William revealed during the couple's 2010 engagement interview, "We were friends for over a year first. It just sort of blossomed from then on." Netflix's "The Crown" seemingly accelerated the series of events for dramatic purposes.
In the series' penultimate episode, "Hope Street," the two have seemingly already coupled up when they move into a shared house with a group of pals. However, during the engagement interview, William insisted that he and Catherine were still in the friend zone when they became roommates. "We moved in together as friends," William said. "We lived with a couple of others, as well, and it just sort of blossomed from there, really. We just saw more of each other, hung out a bit more, and did stuff."
Their first kiss wasn't interrupted by news of the Queen Mother's death
According to "The Crown," Prince William had his aha moment that Catherine could be the one for him when he witnessed her model a sheer dress during a university fashion show. That part is true. In fact, while William watched in the audience, he reportedly turned to his friend Fergus Boyd and remarked, "Wow, Fergus, Kate's hot!" (via Town & Country). A friend who was there that night told Vanity Fair, "It was clear to us that William was smitten with Kate. He actually told her she was a knockout that night, which caused her to blush. There was definitely chemistry between them, and Kate had really made an impression on William."
In the episode, the two get together during the fashion show's afterparty, their attraction to each other evident when they lean in for a kiss. But just as their lips touch, the reverie is broken by William's bodyguard, who relays some sad news: the Queen Mother has just died.
However, that's not precisely the way it went down. The fashion show took place on March 26, 2002. The Queen Mother died on March 30, a full four days later. In fact, William wasn't even in Scotland at the time of his great-grandmother's death nor was he with Catherine; he was in Switzerland on a ski vacation with his family.
William didn't watch his grandmother's Golden Jubilee on TV with the Middletons
One of the more touching scenes in "The Crown" involving the early days of Prince William and Princess Catherine's romance features William having dinner with his new girlfriend's family in their home. While there, William and the Middletons watch the Golden Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II on the telly, with William explaining that his grandmother had given him a pass to miss out on all the royal pomp. However, guilt gets the better of him, and he cuts things short so he can drive back to London to join the festivities. He arrives just in time to appear with Her Majesty and the other royals on the balcony of Buckingham Palace.
Not only is that scenario unlikely, but it's also disputed by a pretty solid source — William's brother, Prince Harry, who wrote about the Golden Jubilee in his controversial memoir, "Spare." "Over four days that summer of 2002, Willy and I were constantly pulling on another set of smart clothes, jumping into another black car, rushing to yet another venue for another party or parade, reception or gala," Harry recalled of the Golden Jubilee, making no mention of William's dramatic last-minute balcony appearance (via Newsweek).
Additionally, The Standard pointed out that the London streets surrounding Buckingham Palace would have been clogged with crowds, making it near impossible to navigate through in the way that it happened in "The Crown."
William and Catherine's reaction to Harry's Nazi costume wasn't quite accurate
"The Crown" has resurrected numerous royal scandals, and the final season brought viewers inside Prince Harry's infamous appearance at a costume ball wearing a Nazi uniform replete with a swastika armband. In the episode, Harry (Luther Ford) is seen in a costume shop with Prince William and Princess Catherine, then known as Kate Middleton. "I don't know," Catherine cautions Harry when he suggests the outfit. "Maybe cover the swastika?" William, however, finds the garb to be hilarious. "Oh, come on," he says. "Wearing the outfit doesn't make him a Nazi. Isn't that the joke?"
Again, the version of events laid out in "The Crown" differs from Harry's account in "Spare." In the book, Harry wrote of being on the fence about two potential costumes — one the Nazi uniform, the other a pilot's outfit. "I phoned Willy and Kate, asked what they thought. Nazi uniform, they said," he wrote, making no mention of costume shopping together (via Page Six). Then, he added, he brought the outfit home and modeled it for the two. "They both howled. Worse than Willy's leotard outfit! Way more ridiculous! Which, again, was the point," he wrote.
Two decades later, Harry admitted he still hadn't gotten over the incident and the media uproar his costume created. "It was probably one of the biggest mistakes in my life," he revealed in the Netflix docuseries "Harry & Meghan" (via Page Six). "I felt so ashamed afterwards."