That was the easy bit. Now comes the hard slog of married life before William’s ultimate elevation to the top job of King.
Say, 30 years minimum, in the expectation that the Queen and Prince Charles both live to their 90s — for the Queen Mother, remember, lived to be 101.
Consider the demands that will flood over HRH Kate.
She will be expected to live up to her role as the royal family’s glamorous new pin-up; she will be a housewife to William at their Anglesey cottage, where they live without staff, while he spends another two years as an RAF search-and-rescue helicopter pilot; and at 29, she’ll be expected, without too much delay, to produce children — both William and his father were born within a year of their parents’ marriage.
How lucky she is to possess such confidence and — as she has shown in the years she and William were courting — endless patience, too. She is a future Queen. What we — and she — do not know, is how far away that future is.
Kate is fortunate that William is so unlike his father Prince Charles, at least as far as the throne is concerned. Charles sees his ascendancy as a God-given right and has worried for years about the significance of his royal role before becoming king.
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However, William is far more relaxed about his destiny. While accepting the duties and constraints, friends know his intention is to give Kate as ‘normal’ a life for as long as possible.
That might be a little difficult because from the moment in two weeks’ time when William and Kate get back from honeymoon, they will be in huge demand.
Differences: Kate is fortunate that William is so unlike his father Prince Charles, at least as far as the throne is concernedThere will be a lull of six weeks before they fly to Canada on a ten-day tour which will be a frenetic round of hysterical Diana-like crowds and rapid outfit changes that takes in Ottawa, Alberta, the Northwest Territories, Prince Edward Island and Quebec.
On Charles and Diana’s first famous tour of Australia in 1983, when ‘Di-mania’ was born, the Prince of Wales peevishly fretted that the crowds surged around his wife and not him.
Does anyone seriously imagine William behaving like that?
‘He can’t wait for the people to love Kate,’ says one of his closest friends. ‘He’ll happily stand in the shadows and let her take all the plaudits. He loves her that much.’
On Charles and Diana¿s first famous tour of Australia in 1983, when 'Di-mania' was born, the Prince of Wales peevishly fretted that the crowds surged around his wife and not himDid I say six-week lull? For the Anglesey housewife there will be the little matter of Trooping the Colour on the Queen’s official birthday, and then there’s Royal Ascot when her racehorse-owning parents are likely to be invited by the Queen into the royal box.
Also, there’s the glitzy annual gala dinner in London in aid of Ark — Absolute Return For Kids — the charity set up by Swiss-born hedge-fund entrepreneur Arpad Busson.
This is when the former Kate Middleton will begin to understand just how William’s mother felt about the endlessly microscopic attention focused on her when she first married into ‘the Firm’. Diana, just 20, was young and inexperienced and from a broken home.
Kate is better educated and has lived a little. She also has a secure family background on which to base her own life.
Kate is better educated than Diana and has lived a little. She also has a secure family background on which to base her own lifeAnd yet one is entitled to worry about a young couple whose royal destiny may not be fulfilled until they are elderly and possibly at an age when everyone else of their generation has retired.
Not that this will worry William. He has, after all, delayed as long as possible his formal entry into the full-time royal round of ribbon-cutting and, at almost 29, may well decide to extend his military career long into his 30s.
His father, on the other hand, was already carrying royal duties full-time by the time he was 24. That is why William loves their cottage in Wales, where for the last two years they have lived, cooked, shopped and shared the washing up.
Some of this idyllic young married life will have to disappear. The sheer demands on their time and, particularly, on the fashions in Kate’s wardrobe, is bound to mean change. She will have a dresser (at least part-time) and a secretary to handle the dozens of letters that are already flooding in.
It has been noted in the royal family that Kate Middleton has the confidence and enthusiasm, as well as the style, to carry off the royal role that she married into yesterday.
Like Diana, Kate seems to have the ability to empathise and enjoy the crowds on public engagements rather than feeling overwhelmed by them.
In Anglesey, where she launched a lifeboat, far from appearing nervous at the crowds pressing around her on one of her first official duties, she radiated calm as well as happiness.
In Ulster, she tossed a Shrove Tuesday pancake with the kind of gusto that for many people brought back wonderful memories of Princess Diana running barefoot in the school mothers’ race on William’s sports day.
But for the moment, the new Duchess will want little more than to be a serving RAF officer’s wife, and to have children. Her mother was 27 when Kate was born, two years younger than Kate is now.
Meanwhile, she must make the best of what little freedom she has left. It won’t last long.
