Prince William Credits Queen Elizabeth For Teaching Him To Love This Popular British Tradition

Prince William is a modern royal with a traditional twist, which is evidently all thanks to his late grandmother. Queen Elizabeth II's relationship with Prince William was a very special one, and they often spent quality time together. The Prince of Wales fondly recalled some of these moments during a video he made as part of a digital memorial to honor the late monarch, noting that there's one British tradition in particular she really got him hooked on. William regularly spent afternoons enjoying tea with the queen and his grandfather, Prince Philip, accompanied by casual chatter and, of course, Her Majesty's beloved corgis. 

"To this day, she's given me a love of teatime that I never knew I needed," William shared, per The Times, adding, "These moments with my grandmother are ones I'll always hold dear." Having spent so much intentional time with his grandmother, it shouldn't come as too much of a surprise that a love of teatime isn't the only thing the queen influenced in William's life in the long run. Royal expert Robert Lacey disclosed to Elle in 2021 that the prince choosing to remain largely mum about William's years-long feud with his younger brother, Prince Harry, is a classic behavior he picked up from the long-reigning monarch. 

"William has pretended it hasn't happened, and he's an old-style royal in that sense," Lacey asserted. "He's taken lessons from his grandmother, and this is something of a patent in the royal family." The historian and biographer added that, while many would expect William to take cues from his father, King Charles III, this has never really been the case, with the queen having a much bigger impact on how he sees the world and his role in The Firm.

Prince William clearly learned a lot from Queen Elizabeth II, but in 2025, the beloved royal admitted on Eugene Levy's "Reluctant Traveler" that, when he was still quite young, he didn't have a close bond with his grandmother. William ascribed it to their significant generational gap. "My grandparents were of a different generation," he explained (via Page Six). "I think when we were younger, it was harder to have that very close relationship because it was quite formal." But like fine wine, their relationship only got better with time. "As they got older and I got older, it got warmer and warmer," William shared, noting that she and Prince Philp "sort of relaxed a little bit" by the time they entered their 80s. 

The Prince of Wales has also given a great deal of credit to the queen for helping him to navigate his mother, Princess Diana's, tragic death. In 2016, William confirmed to Sky News that his grandmother stepped up to be his female role model: "Having lost my mother at a very young age, it has been particularly important for me that I had somebody like the queen to look up to and who has been there and has understood some of the more complex issues when you lose a loved one." 

Furthermore, many royal experts believe that the queen would be so proud of William for the actions he's taken after her death. The prince handled his father and his wife's cancer diagnoses with grace and courage, and royal biographer Andrew Morton pointed out to The Mirror in 2024 that William had upheld Her Majesty's ethos that "the show has to go on," even when everything else is falling apart.