The year was 2007, and Kate Middleton—who at the time, was Prince William's ex-girlfriend—joined her sister Pippa at a book launch party in London. The photos reveal a smiling 25-year-old Kate dressed in a cream-colored lace dress and black slingback heels, looking like any twenty-some society girl at the time. But nearly two decades later, the Daily Mail's Richard Eden has revealed the telling conversation he had with Middleton during the event and what it revealed about her "tough" character.
Eden first met Kate on May 14, 2007 when they were both attending the launch party for Simon Sebag Montefiore’s biography Young Stalin at London's Asprey store (ironically, a brand Middleton would go on to wear many times as a princess).
Eden shared that the former royal girlfriend spoke to him "in a group with Sebag Montefiore’s sister-in-law, the TV presenter Tara Palmer-Tomkinson, who sadly died a decade later at the age of 45." At one point in the conversation, Palmer-Tomkinson, a famous figure on the London social scene, asked Middleton about her breakup. The socialite was no stranger to the royals—Palmer-Tomkinson's parents were friends of The King (then Prince Charles) and she was well-acquainted with Prince William.
As Eden noted, she "was not shy about speaking intimately about him to Catherine." Middleton, however, wasn't having it.
The Daily Mail columnist shared that "Tara, typically, got straight down to what everyone really wanted to know about: Catherine’s break-up with William." The couple had sadly split that spring, and "had been a big story since it had been disclosed a few months earlier."
When Palmer-Tomkinson asked "How are you doing?" Middleton replied with a one-word answer, stating, "Fine" and "blushing," per Eden. "'It must be so hard...' Tara persisted," he continued. This was when the future Queen put her foot down, with Eden recalling that she "replied firmly if uncomfortably," stating, "Really, it's fine."
"She made clear with her body language that she didn’t wish to discuss the subject, and the conversation moved swiftly on to happier and less fraught matters," the columnist wrote of the awkward breakup chat.
It was this encounter that made a lasting impression on Eden, who pointed out that Middleton "was seen as a party-loving girlfriend of William" at the time. He continued that his "first encounter with her taught me that she was a tough cookie who wasn’t going to be inveigled into saying something she didn’t want to say by anyone—not even a close friend of the royals."
Her demeanor even reminded the writer "of members of the Royal Family, much older than herself," musing that the royals "have the uncanny ability to make small-talk with anyone" without giving away anything of note. Eden pointed out that although the princess "has changed in many ways" over the years, she showed "a hint of that inner steel which has stood her so well in the years since."
Of course, Middleton went on to get back together with William later that year, and we all know the rest of the story. During their 2010 engagement interview, Kate reflected on their time apart, stating, "I at the time wasn’t very happy about it, but actually it made me a stronger person. You find out things about yourself that maybe you hadn’t realized. I think you can get quite consumed by a relationship when you’re younger, and I really valued that time for me, as well."
