His ability to link a modern, down-to-earth approach to his public role with the “common touch” displayed by his mother, the late Princess Diana, is considered a winning combination.
His university lecturers said William was “one of the crowd” during his four years at St. Andrews’ University in Scotland, from where he graduated with a degree in geography in 2005.
From his time at university, where he met his future wife, Kate Middleton, William relates the story of a teenage girl who handed him a note in which she proposed to him. “Very sweet of her to ask me but I had to decline,” he said.
His ability to connect with people was most recently demonstrated during a tour of the disaster-stricken regions of New Zealand and Australia, where the 28-year-old royal was feted as the “prince of hearts.”
“I was HRH [His Royal Highness] Prince William as soon as I was born. But I want people to call me William ... I don’t want all these formalities because they are not needed ...” he has said. “I just want to come across as me—and I hope that’s what will happen.”
But, at the same time, William is fully aware of his role.
“All these questions about do you want to be king? It’s not a question of wanting to be, it’s something I was born into, it’s my duty,” he said in an interview marking his 21st birthday.
Describing his grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, as “incredible” and a “huge role model” for him, William said he believed the monarchy plays a “very important role.”
“But I think it’s important that people feel the monarchy can keep up with them and is relevant to their lives.”
William witnessed the very public breakup of the marriage of his parents, Prince Charles and Princess Diana, while still a schoolboy in his early teens. He was just 15 when his mother died.
It was not until 2009 that William spoke publicly about the loss of his mother, as he took over a number of patronages of charities she used to chair. Not a day went by when he did not think of her, he said, adding that he was determined to continue her legacy because she had always been an “inspiration.”
“Life is altered as you know it, and not a day goes past without you thinking of the one you have lost. For many, that is a grief never entirely lost,” William said.
The bond Diana developed with William, and his younger brother, Harry, has led to the extraordinarily close relationship between the two brothers now, experts believe.
“They do everything together,” noted one expert, observing that the lack of rivalry and presence of warmth and emotion in the upbringing of royal offspring is by no means the rule.
The opposite was best exemplified by Prince Charles, whose cool and detached relations with his parents are well documented.
Prince William Arthur Philip Louis of Wales was born on June 21, 1982, at St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington, less than a year after the fairytale wedding of Diana and Prince Charles.
After completing his private schooling at Eton, William went on a gap year, which included jungle training in Belize with the army and an expedition to Chile with Raleigh International.
In 2005, William, having switched his academic course to geography from history of art, graduated from St Andrews University, with a dissertation on the coral reefs of Rodrigues in the Indian Ocean.
Throughout his school and university years, he insisted on being known as William Wales.
He joined the Royal Academy Sandhurst as an officer cadet in 2006, and was commissioned as an army officer in the Household Cavalry at the end of that year—as Lieutenant Wales.
But soon, William switched to flying, training as a Search and Rescue pilot in the Royal Air Force—a job he says he loves and will continue well beyond his wedding day.
