While Prince William and Kate Middleton are a love story for the ages, one royal biographer claims William was madly in love with another woman just weeks before meeting Kate, Marie Claire is reporting. Will was allegedly so in love with this woman that he debated dropping out of University St. Andrews so he could be with her. Royal biographer and expert Katie Nicholl spilled all the details in her book, William and Harry: Behind the Palace Walls . Nicholl says that before Kate, there was Arabella Musgrave.
Arabella’s dad owns the Cirencester Park Polo Club, and their families had known each other for a long time. William and Arabella met when they were children, but William only began to take notice of her as they aged. Arabella was also part of William and Harry’s exclusive group of friends, dubbed the “Glosse Posse.” This means that Arabella often received the coveted invites to William’s wild high school parties he was said to have held in the basement of Prince Charles’ manor, Highgrove. It was at one of these parties that the two allegedly first got together.
“They danced and drank into the early hours, and when Arabella said her goodnights, the prince quietly slipped out of the room to follow her upstairs,” Nicholl wrote in her book. “It was the beginning of a passionate romance and the two spent as much time together that summer as possible.”
This didn’t end up just being a fling — William was even said to have asked for his father’s blessing of the relationship. The two tried to make their relationship work when he left for college, and William even drove home every Friday night to spend time with her. He was seriously considering dropping out of school to go back to Arabella, but a classmate convinced him to stay. Allegedly, this classmate was Kate.
Naturally, William and Arabella didn’t work out in the long-run. William went on to marry Kate and have three children with her: Prince George of Cambridge, 5, Princess Charlotte of Cambridge, 3, and Prince Louis of Cambridge, 9-months-old. As for Arabella, she’s doing just fine as well; she married investment banker George Galliers-Pratt in 2014. Their wedding was so extravagant that it was featured in Vogue . While Arabella may not be the Duchess of Cambridge, she is the head of public relations at Gucci — a pretty good gig.
The high school sweethearts didn’t make it very far into their relationship, but everything seemed to work out for both of them in the end.
