Did Carole Middleton Mastermind Prince William and Kate's Relationship?

In part two of The Crown's final season, Kate Middleton calls her mom, Carole, to tell her that Prince William is coming to a charity fashion show she's going to be walking in. "Does he know you're back on the market?" Carole (Eve Best) asks her daughter. "Mum!" Kate (Meg Bellamy) exclaims, with a smile on her face.

"Well, maybe find a way of letting him know," Carole tells Kate. Her daughter replies, smiling, "Honestly, you're worse than Mrs. Bennet."

Eve Best plays Carole Middleton in The Crown.

Mrs. Bennet is from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, and is a scheming, middle-class woman who wants all her daughters married and their futures financially secure. As Rachel Dunphy writes in LitHub, Mrs. Bennet "takes the plight of her children seriously, and she works tirelessly to ensure their futures. She schemes endless scenarios to endear her daughters to men of means."

It's notable that The Crown explicitly compares Mrs. Bennet to Carole Middleton, who some think is to be the reason behind Kate Middleton meeting, and later marrying, Prince William. Carole doesn't care for the speculation, nor does she read it, saying in 2018, "Well, I thought it was better to know what people thought. But it doesn’t make any difference. I’m not really sure how I’m perceived now. But the thing is… it is really normal – most of the time." In another part of that same interview, she said, "Over the years, it’s proved wise not to say anything."

Kate and her mom, Carole, in 2005.

In The Palace Papers: Inside the House of Windsor—the Truth and the Turmoil, Tina Brown writes, "It is unlikely Kate would be where she is today without her mother’s canny help in negotiating a royal romance. Carole Middleton is usually characterized as a cross between Jane Austen’s Mrs. Bennet and the sitcom social climber Hyacinth Bucket, who answers the phone 'The Bouquet residence.' Neither model is right. Carole has considerable strategic flair. Whenever Kate was bloodied in the ring, she retreated to Bucklebury, where Coach Carole would dress her wounds, advise her on moves, and urge her to keep her eyes on the prize."

Mainly, Brown writes, it is Carole who changed Kate's education plans to have her cross paths with the future king. "When the news was announced in 2000 that Prince William would be spending his university years at the small Scottish university of St. Andrews, Kate suddenly bailed out of Edinburgh University fifty miles away and reapplied at St. Andrews," Brown writes.

This allegation first gained widespread prominence in Katie Nicholl's book, Kate: The Future Queen, where she reports advisors at Kate's high school Marlborough College said her first choice was Edinburgh. Kate's house mistress, said, "After she left school, Catherine made some different decisions, but why she made those decisions I don’t know."

It is true that Kate was accepted to Edinburgh, and then decided take a gap year and then go to St. Andrews. Whether or not Carole was the reason is unclear. A reporter covering the royal beat at the time has recalled to T&C that a Kensington Palace source pushed back against this narrative, however the Palace has never commented on the record about it.

Carole with Queen Elizabeth and Camilla, then the Duchess of Cornwall, at William and Kate’s wedding in 2011.

Numerous royal correspondents have told a version of this account. "Some insiders wonder whether her university meeting with Prince William can really be ascribed to coincidence," Matthew Bell wrote in The Spectator back in 2005. "Although at the time of making her application to universities it was unknown where the Prince was intending to go, it has been suggested that her mother persuaded Kate to reject her first choice [Edinburgh] on hearing the news and take up her offer at St. Andrews instead."

So while we will never know how much Carole Middleton truly masterminded the relationship of Kate and William, she may have set her daughter on a path to be the future Queen of England. A modern-day Mrs. Bennet, indeed.

Emily Burack

Senior News Editor

Emily Burack (she/her) is the Senior News Editor for Town & Country, where she covers entertainment, culture, the royals, and a range of other subjects. Before joining T&C, she was the deputy managing editor at Hey Alma, a Jewish culture site. Follow her @emburack on Twitter and Instagram.