The Sun - William and Kate: A Royal Love Story

The outpouring of joy at the news of Prince Williams long-awaited engagement to the beautiful Kate Middleton should come as no surprise to anyone. William has always held a special place in the hearts of the British people, who have recognised qualities in Kate that make her a perfect future Queen.

Patriotic supporters of the Royal Family have closely followed every twist and turn of Williams life as though he were a favourite nephew or the son of a best friend. During his teenage years, there was an enduring fascination over who he would choose to become his wife. The Sun was the first newspaper to tell the world that William had fallen in love with Kate. From that day on, the public paid close attention to the shapely brunette and were charmed by everything they saw. The national obsession over Williams love life subtly shifted from Who? to the pressing question of When?

In finally asking Kate to marry him, William is set to wed a young woman who boasts a winning combination of glamour, grace, poise and intelligence. Many believe that she will now enchant us in the same way as her future husbands late mother, the immensely popular and beguiling Princess Diana. Those who have closely monitored the couples relationship are convinced that they make a better match than Diana and Prince Charles, Williams father. A mere six months separates them in age rather than the 12-year gulf that divided Charles and Diana. They share similar interests, character traits and a healthy desire for normality in spite of their unique circumstances.

Yet in almost every way, their backgrounds could not be more different as you would expect from a union between a young man born to be King and a girl from the Home Counties.

William is set to wed a young woman who boasts a winning combination of glamour, grace, poise and intelligence.

With every imaginable privilege available to him and flunkies on hand to attend to his every whim, William should have enjoyed a dream upbringing. But ironically it was Kate who had the more enviable start in life, basking in the warmth of her familys stability, security and love.

Catherine Elizabeth Middleton was born on 9 January 1982, to mum Carole and dad Michael in Readings Royal Berkshire Hospital. Just over eighteen months later she was joined by a sister, Pippa, and, three and a half years after that, a brother James arrived. Carole Goldsmith was working as an air hostess in the 1970s when she met her man. Michael Middleton was a pilot whose powerful masculine looks made him very popular amongst female flight attendants. After a brief time dating, Michael and Carole married in Chiltern, Buckinghamshire, in 1980.

Kate was born two years later and spent the first 13 years of her life growing up in the village of West View, near Bradfield Southend, Berkshire. Her parents had bought the four-bed semi-detached Victorian villa for 35,000 in 1979 and it was from here that they made a very important life decision. It is one that has almost certainly contributed to Kates position today. They were determined to give everything to their children and agreed that international jet-setting was not compatible with family life. They left the airline industry to set up Party Pieces, a mail-order company supplying packs of goodies to guarantee the perfect kids bash. Appropriately, wedding kits and princess costumes are amongst the items now shipped by the family firms successful online operation.

In 1987, Carole launched the business from a back-garden shed, later expanding into a small industrial unit in nearby Yattendon. Eight years on, the growing firm moved base again into converted farm buildings a mile down the road. In the same year, the family paid 250,000 for a home in the village of Bucklebury. The five-bedroom detached property set within woodland is now worth more than 1 million.

Kate experienced an idyllic childhood, growing up in picture-postcard English villages with parents who packaged and sold fun for a living. A blog she wrote on the Party Pieces website years later provides a telling insight into her carefree youth. She portrayed herself as a happy and outgoing child who loved to dress up as a clown in giant dungarees at fancy dress parties. She described her best party memory as an amazing white rabbit marshmallow cake that Mummy made when I was seven. Musical statues, she revealed, was a favourite game because she had always been a keen dancer. Party bags were best, she said, when they contained anything that Mummy would normally never allow me to have. They were always such a treat. She recommended cooking parties for girls and camping parties for boys because they were a great way to get Daddies involved. And she admitted she had suffered a cake disaster during Jamess birthday when she forgot to add self-raising flour and turned a flat sponge into a trifle cake.

When William and Kate speak about their respective childhoods, her innocent memories must seem a million miles from some of his painful recollections. His youth was blighted by the trauma of his parents marriage breakdown and the tragically premature death of his mother all played out in the media spotlight.

Life began promisingly enough for Prince William Arthur Philip Louis Wales, the boy destined one day to become the 42nd monarch since William the Conqueror took the English throne in 1066. His birth at St Marys Hospital in London on 21 June 1982 was met with a 41-gun salute, the sounding of bells and rejoicing that reverberated around Britain and beyond. It came 11 months after Prince Charles, the Queens eldest son, had tied the knot with the then Lady Diana Spencer.

Their fairy-tale ceremony at St Pauls Cathedral was watched by a worldwide audience of 750 million people who were transfixed by the pomp and pageantry.

Diana made it her mission to give them a sense of fun, freedom and most importantly normality.

William inherited his mothers good looks, his fathers inquiring nature and as the passing years would reveal the House of Windsor hairline. Prince Harry was born just over two years after William, and the two were to become close friends and allies.

They were brought up in palatial surroundings, with nanny Barbara Barnes keeping a watchful eye over them in their early years.

Being a Prince certainly had many advantages over being a commoner. William once received a 60,000 scaled-down Jaguar car for his birthday, making Kates clown dungarees look rather small beer in comparison. On another occasion, he jokingly threatened a school rival with his grandmothers soldiers during a row.