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The Prince and Princess of Wales have learned they “can share glimpses of their very real, loving relationship without compromising their privacy or their lifestyle.”
The Gist
- Prince William and Kate Middleton, married for 15 years, seem more in love than ever.
- The Prince and Princess of Wales now feel “safe enough” to show the public the “intensity of their feelings for each other,” body language expert Judi James told The Daily Mail, particularly after Kate’s 2024 cancer diagnosis.
- One photo in particular demonstrates how the couple “feel free” to let the public in on their deep love for one another.
Prince William and Kate Middleton are more in love than ever—and it shows.
The Prince and Princess of Wales, married for 15 years now, have been through so much in the last handful of years, particularly her 2024 cancer diagnosis. (The future queen shared in January 2025 that she is in remission.) If a picture paints a thousand words, their love story—which began nearly 25 years ago after meeting as first-year students at the University of St. Andrews in the fall of 2001—can be summed up in a recent photo shared of the couple locked in a loving embrace after Kate completed the Three Peaks Challenge last month. In the challenge, the princess climbed the three highest mountains in Scotland, England, and Wales in just 24 hours, raising money for The Royal Marsden Cancer Charity, the same hospital where she received cancer treatment.
There was once a time when protocol dictated that William and Kate largely eschew PDA—but that is no more. The aforementioned photo of the Prince and Princess of Wales embracing after Kate completed the Three Peaks Challenge shows the public a “glimpse” of the pair’s “honest intensity of their feelings for each other,” body language expert Judi James told The Daily Mail.
“Their rituals suggest there’s been no real change in the intensity of their love for one another—what’s happened is they have finally felt safe enough to trust enough, not each other but the public and the press, to show it,” James said. “It’s a hug that suggests all inhibitions are being jettisoned as the desire to greet and cherish takes over.”
She added that, for the couple, it is “yet another sign that the latest chapter of their marriage, the one where they feel free to show their levels of mutual love and adoration by more tactile behaviors in public, is still very much a part of their personal and generational royal brand now.”
Speaking of William’s mother Princess Diana and her often rocky marriage to his father Prince Charles, James said that Charles and Diana’s marriage “created a salutary lesson for her son William in terms of how risky and dangerous emotional baring can be for the royals. The rabid obsession that occurred when a leading royal broke through the frost of protocol and behaved like a normal, living, breathing, and loveable human being only seemed to prove to the Firm that particular cork needed putting back in the bottle.”
“William always acted like a man concerned that his own wife might go down the same path and become a lightning rod for intrusive attention,” she added. “This fear and desire to protect Kate led to several years of emotional suppression in public.”
Over time, James continued, William “learned to trust and relax a little.” But, as it does in so many aspects of life, Kate’s cancer diagnosis changed everything and ushered in a “new chapter” for the Prince and Princess of Wales—one that includes PDA. Kate’s emotional video in September 2024 that announced the end of her chemotherapy treatment was a turning point. In this video, the public had a front row seat to the “intensity of their love and affection for one another in a breathtaking way,” James said.
“This video was a love story for the couple as they snuggled together, lay together, and clearly showed how much they adored each other,” she continued. “As a statement of intent, it did the job in terms of proving what we had only really guessed at, which is that this is a happy, caring, playful but also passionate relationship. Kate’s illness had obviously changed the context in a dramatic way.”
Just days after the Prince and Princess of Wales released their photo from the Three Peaks Challenge, they once again delighted the public, engaging in PDA on July 10 at the Royal Charity Polo Cup in Windsor Great Park.
“William and Kate now look like a couple that has learnt it can share glimpses of their very real, loving relationship without compromising their privacy or their lifestyle,” James said.
Royal historian Amanda Foreman previously told People that William and Kate “seem more loved-up than ever.”
“What they have been through over the last few years has been so terrible,” she said. “That either drives couples apart or, in their case, it brings them together. It irons out the kinks and enables them to see each other clearly.”
“If continuity and stability is what the monarchy is supposed to give you, you only need to look at this marriage,” a source who knows the Prince and Princess of Wales told The Telegraph. “Whatever has happened in his life, in her life, the continuity and stability of their relationship has seen them through it. They are exactly the same as they have always been. They’re unshakeable, the two of them.”
A palace source added that the couple has “turned the page after an awful period in their life. They’re stepping into the future together as a team.”
Read the original article on InStyle
