What to Know
Kate Middleton is most commonly known as Kate to the public, but her full first name is actually Catherine, and that’s what she uses for all royal business. But according to a new piece of intel, if Queen Camilla and King Charles had their way when she and Prince William first got married, she would have changed her first name — a truly wild request that William was absolutely not down with.
Camilla and Charles wanted Kate to set herself apart.
For years, there have been rumored tensions between Camilla and Kate, and maybe this was the inciting incident.
As Radar Online reported, in Christopher Andersen’s book Kate! The Courage, Grace, and Power of the Woman Who Will Be Queen, he wrote that Charles and Camilla wanted Kate to change her first name to Catherine spelled with a “K” instead of a “C,” because their names already started with C.
(And yes, this is a real thing that happened, because Prince Harry first wrote about it in his book, Spare.)
“For Catherine, it felt like they were reaching into something incredibly personal – the name her parents chose for her and the way she has been known her entire life,” a royal source told Christopher in the book. “Being asked to alter that, even just a letter, struck her as strange and quite intrusive, especially when the public already recognized her as Kate.”
William had a “very strong” reaction to the request.
William was the first to defend Kate against his dad and stepmother’s outlandish request, and it sounds like that temper we’ve heard so much about came out in that moment.
“He was seething and viewed the name-change suggestion as needless interference and, more importantly, as disrespectful to the Middleton family,” the royal source said. “In his mind, changing his wife’s name to suit a neat set of royal initials was completely unacceptable. He was genuinely angry that anyone thought it appropriate to try to rebrand something as fundamental as her own name.”
Good for William. It was a ridiculous request — one that Camilla and Charles should have known better than to ask. Kate’s a human, not a new accessory they were adding to their family.
There was never any chance that Kate was going to change her name.
It sounds like neither Will nor Kate even entertained the idea of changing her name, so it was a nonstarter — especially since Will saw it as the institution of the monarchy “crossing a line” into the couple’s personal lives.
“In private, William was unequivocal,” the source added. “He made it plain that there would be no alteration, and that clarity is what brought the whole discussion to an abrupt end. It became a small but telling flashpoint between a more traditional mindset — where everything is molded to fit the royal mold — and the modern stance William and Catherine are trying to take.”
It’s hard to imagine Kate as Katherine-With-a-K instead of Catherine, Princess of Wales, how we’ve always known her. Then again, it’s even harder to imagine that a question like that would even come out of Charles and Camilla’s mouths, so here we are.
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