“The Daily Mail Remembers” series is pretty special. Usually, they’re just recycling stories about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, showcasing their obsession for a couple who escaped and lives happily in California. But every so often, The Mail Remembers something pretty funny from Prince William and Kate’s past. One of my recent favorites was “remember when QEII told everyone that Kate needed to get a job?” Well, this weekend’s exclusive is… remember when Prince William dated Arabella Musgrave, a few years before the Middletons got their hooks into him?
Before meeting his future wife Kate at St Andrews, Prince William had a fling with another affluent young woman. In the summer of 2001, before he began his four-year course in Scotland, a childhood friend caught the prince’s eye at a mutual acquaintance’s party. Arabella Musgrave was the 18-year-old daughter of polo club manager Major Nicholas Musgrave.
‘Although not titled aristocracy, Arabella was a close friend of Guy Pelly and Hugh Van Cutsem and part of the Glosse Posse,’ royal correspondent Katie Nicholl wrote in her book, The Making of a Royal Romance. This was the name given to William and Harry’s inner circle and meant Arabella secured an invite to parties the princes used to throw in the basement of Highgrove and those Van Custem would run from his family residence.
‘As she walked through the house party at the Van Cutsems’ family home, William did a double take,’ Nicholl continued. ‘Arabella had blossomed into a gorgeous looking girl, and as she sashayed past him, her perfume lingering in the air, he wondered why he hadn’t noticed her properly until now.’
The two danced and drank until the early hours and, as noted by Nicholl, ‘William knew he would make a move on her by the end of the night’. The royal author added: ‘When Arabella said her goodnights, the prince quietly slipped out of the room to follow her upstairs. It was the beginning of a passionate romance and the two spent as much time together that summer as possible.’
The romance was approved by Prince Charles who ‘suspected the relationship would soon fizzle out and instructed William’s protection officers to give the couple plenty of leeway’. But Major Nicholas was much harder to please. When he caught his daughter sitting on William’s lap while the prince kissed her neck he had a quiet word, according to Nicholl. ‘Although he was fond of William, such displays of affection, he insisted, were not for public consumption.’
The relationship ended by the time William went to St Andrews in what Nicholl described as a ‘mutual decision’. ‘William would be meeting new people at university and Arabella could not expect him to to wait for her,’ she wrote.
During his first term, William started dating Carly Massy-Birch, an English language and creative writing student. He was often invited to supper at Carly’s home, where the prince would step over her muddy Hunter Wellington boots in the hallway. Their affair was to be short-lived, however, and ended somewhat stickily when Carly told William he had to make a decision between her and Arabella.
Despite having swarms of attractive women to choose between, William was bored in Scotland. Nicholl wrote: ‘He missed his friends in Gloucestershire and going to his favourite nightclubs in London. He also missed Arabella, and on Friday nights when he began his journey home to Highgrove he was comforted by the fact that she would be waiting for him.’
I enjoyed this piece because I actually forgot about this early romance for William. It’s another reminder that… the young women of the aristocracy really didn’t see a future with him. I won’t say that they wanted nothing to do with him – they did, and he had some posh girlfriends and flings with well-connected young women, and some of those flings happened during his relationship with Kate. But absolutely none of those aristo women wanted to marry him. None of them wanted any part of the clownshow of the monarchy. But yes, it’s one of the big sliding-doors moments for William: how different would his life have been if he went to a different university, stayed with Arabella and/or managed to avoid the Middleton stalkers?
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Getty, Cover Images.
