Kate Middleton Early Life, Age, Family, Relationship, Affairs, Facts, Wiki, Marriage, Motherhood, Privacy, Bio, Honours, Title, Ancestry, Biography

Name: Kate Middleton ( Catherine Elizabeth Mountbatten-Windsor, Duchess of Cambridge )

Born: January 09, 1982

Age: 36 years old

Birthplace: Reading, UK

Height: 175

Occupation: Duchess of Cambridge

Tags: cambridge, duchess

Relationship Status: married to Prince William

Early life


Catherine Elizabeth Middleton was born at the Royal Berkshire Hospital in Reading on 9 January 1982 into an upper-middle-class family. She was baptised at St Andrew's Bradfield, Berkshire, on 20 June 1982. She is the eldest of three children born to Michael Middleton (b. 1949), and his wife, Carole (née Goldsmith; b. 1955), a former flight dispatcher and flight attendant, respectively, who in 1987 founded Party Pieces, a privately held mail order company that sells party supplies and decorations with an estimated worth of £30 million. Her father's family has ties to British aristocracy and benefited financially from trust funds which they established over 100 years ago. Her Middleton relatives were reported as having played host to British royalty "as long ago as 1926". She has a younger sister, Pippa, and a younger brother, James.

The family lived in Amman, Jordan, from May 1984 to September 1986 where her father worked for British Airways (BA). Middleton attended an English-language nursery school. When her family returned to Berkshire in 1986, she was enrolled aged four at St Andrew's School, a private school near Pangbourne in Berkshire. She boarded part-weekly at St Andrew's in her later years. She studied at Downe House School. She was a boarder at Marlborough College, a co-educational independent boarding school in Wiltshire, and graduated in 2005 from the University of St Andrews in Fife, Scotland, with an undergraduate MA (2:1 Hons) in the history of art. Before university, during a gap year, she travelled to Chile to participate in a Raleigh International programme, and studied at the British Institute of Florence in Italy. In November 2006, Middleton worked as an accessory buyer with the clothing chain Jigsaw, where she worked part-time until November 2007. She also worked until January 2011 at the family business in catalogue design and production, marketing, and photography. Prior to her marriage, Middleton lived in an apartment owned by her parents in Chelsea, London, which was estimated to be worth £1–1.4 million. In 2018, Catherine's total net worth was estimated at £5–7.3 million, most of which is from her parents' company.

Relationship with Prince William

Early relationship

In 2001, Middleton met Prince William while they were students in residence at St Salvator's Hall at the University of St Andrews. She reportedly caught William's eye at a charity fashion show at the university in 2002 when she appeared on the stage wearing a see-through lace dress. The couple began dating in 2003, although their relationship remained unconfirmed. During their second year, Middleton shared a flat with William and two other friends. On 17 October 2005, Middleton complained through her lawyer about harassment from the media, stating she had done nothing significant to warrant publicity.

Middleton attended Prince William's Passing Out Parade at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst on 15 December 2006. Media attention increased around the time of her 25th birthday in January 2007, prompting warnings from both the Prince of Wales and Prince William and from Middleton's lawyers, who threatened legal action. Two newspaper groups, News International, which publishes The Times and The Sun; and the Guardian Media Group, publishers of The Guardian, decided to refrain from publishing paparazzi photographs of her.

In April 2007, Prince William and Middleton split up. The couple decided to break up during a holiday in the Swiss resort of Zermatt. Newspapers speculated about the reasons for the split, although these reports relied on anonymous sources. Middleton and her family attended the Concert for Diana in July 2007 at Wembley Stadium, where she and Prince William sat two rows apart. The couple were subsequently seen together in public on a number of occasions and news sources stated that they had "rekindled their relationship". Her long-term relationship with William before the marriage earned her the nickname "Waity Katie" in the tabloid press.

On 17 May 2008, Middleton attended the wedding of Prince William's cousin Peter Phillips to Autumn Kelly, which the prince did not attend. On 19 July 2008, she was a guest at the wedding of Lady Rose Windsor and George Gilman. Prince William was away on military operations in the Caribbean, serving aboard HMS Iron Duke. In 2010, Middleton pursued an invasion of privacy claim against two agencies and photographer Niraj Tanna, who took photographs of her over Christmas 2009. She obtained a public apology, £5,000 in damages, and legal costs.

Engagement and marriage

Prince William and Catherine Middleton became engaged in October 2010, in Kenya, during a 10-day trip to the Lewa Wildlife Conservancy to celebrate his passing the RAF helicopter search and rescue course. Clarence House announced the engagement on 16 November 2010. Prince William gave Middleton the engagement ring that had belonged to his mother, Diana, Princess of Wales. The couple married in Westminster Abbey on 29 April 2011 (St. Catherine's Day), with the day declared a bank holiday in the United Kingdom. Estimates of the global audience for the wedding ranged around 300 million or more, whilst 26 million watched the event live in Britain alone. On marriage, Catherine assumed the style "Her Royal Highness The Duchess of Cambridge".

In October, several months after the wedding, Commonwealth leaders pledged that they would implement changes in British royal succession law to adopt absolute primogeniture, meaning the first child of the Duke and Duchess, whether male or female, would be next in line to the throne after their father.

Motherhood and children

On 3 December 2012, St James's Palace announced that the Duchess was pregnant with her first child. The announcement was made earlier in the pregnancy than is usual as she had been admitted to King Edward VII's Hospital suffering from hyperemesis gravidarum, a severe form of morning sickness. She remained in the hospital for three days. On 14 January 2013, St James's Palace announced that the child was due to be born in July 2013, and that the Duchess's condition was improving. The Duchess was admitted to St Mary's Hospital in London in the early stages of labour on the morning of 22 July 2013 and gave birth to Prince George later that day.

The Duchess's second pregnancy was announced on 8 September 2014. As with her first pregnancy, the Duchess suffered from hyperemesis gravidarum that required her to cancel official engagements. On 2 May 2015, she gave birth to Princess Charlotte.

On 4 September 2017, the Duchess's third pregnancy was announced. She was again forced to cancel engagements due to hyperemesis gravidarum. Prince Louis was born on 23 April 2018.

Privacy And The Media

The death of Diana, Princess of Wales, in Paris while being chased by paparazzi in 1997, influenced the Duke's attitude towards the media. The Duchess and her husband have asked that, when off-duty, their privacy should be respected, but the media has not always respected with their wishes.

In 2009, before her engagement to William, Middleton was awarded £10,000 damages and an apology from the photographic press agency Rex Features Ltd. after she was photographed playing tennis on Christmas Eve while on holiday in Cornwall.

In September 2012, the French edition of Closer and the Italian gossip magazine Chi, published photographs of the Duchess sun-bathing topless while on holiday at the Château d'Autet (a private château on a 260-ha estate 71 km north of Aix-en-Provence). Analysts from The Times believed the photographs were taken from the D22 (Vaucluse) road half a kilometre from the pool—a distance that would require an 800-mm or a 1000-mm lens. On 17 September 2012, the Duke and Duchess filed a criminal complaint with the French prosecution department and launched a claim for civil damages at the Tribunal de Grande Instance de Nanterre. The following day the courts granted an injunction against Closer prohibiting further publication of the photographs and announced a criminal investigation would be initiated. Under French law, punitive damages cannot be awarded but intrusions of privacy are a criminal offence carrying a maximum jail sentence of one year and a fine of up to €45,000 for individuals and €225,000 for companies. In September 2017, Closer was fined €100,000 and its editor Laurence Pieau and owner Ernesto Mauri were each fined €45,000.

In December 2012, two Australian radio hosts, Michael Christian and Mel Greig, called King Edward VII's Hospital Sister Agnes where the Duchess was an in-patient for hyperemesis gravidarum. Pretending to be the Queen and the Prince of Wales, Greig and Christian spoke to a nurse on the Duchess's ward, enquiring about her condition. Following a hospital inquiry and a public backlash against the hoax, Jacintha Saldanha, the nurse who put the call through to the ward, committed suicide. The radio hosts subsequently apologised for their actions.

In February 2013, Chi published the first photos of Catherine's exposed baby bump, taken during her vacation on the private island of Mustique. The British press refused to publish the paparazzi shots. While the Duchess was visiting the Blue Mountains in Sydney, a picture was taken of her bare bottom as her dress blew up. Many newspapers outside the UK published the picture.

On 14 August 2015, Kensington Palace published a letter detailing what it stated were the "dangerous" and invasive efforts of the media to get paparazzi pictures of Prince George and Princess Charlotte. Jason Knauf, communications secretary to the Cambridges, wrote the letter to media standards organisations in various countries.

Titles, styles, honours and arms

Catherine is, by marriage, a princess of the United Kingdom and entitled to the style of Royal Highness. She is usually styled as "Her Royal Highness The Duchess of Cambridge". When in Scotland, she is referred to as the Countess of Strathearn. Northern Ireland is represented by a third title, Lady Carrickfergus.
Honours

Medals

6 February 2012: Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal

Commonwealth honours

1 October 2016: Tuvalu Order of Merit

Honorary military appointments 

Canada

5 July 2011 – present: Canadian Ranger 

United Kingdom

16 December 2015 – present: Honorary Air Commandant of the Royal Air Force Air Cadets

Honorific eponym

Awards

Ontario: Their Royal Highnesses The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge Award, University of Waterloo, Waterloo

Arms

In September 2013, the Queen granted a conjugal coat of arms to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, consisting of their individual arms displayed side by side, beneath a helm and coronet denoting the duke's status as grandson of the sovereign. Below is shown the earlier grant of the duchess's personal arms, impaled with those of her husband.

Ancestry

The Duchess of Cambridge's father, Michael, and her paternal ancestors were from Leeds, Yorkshire. Her paternal great-grandmother, Olive, was a member of the Lupton family, who are described in the City of Leeds Archives as "landed gentry, a political and business dynasty"; previously unpublished pictures revealed in March 2015 that Olive Middleton had grown up on her family's Potternewton Hall Estate alongside her cousin, Baroness von Schunck (née Kate Lupton). Catherine's paternal ancestors also include her great-great-grandfather, politician Francis Martineau Lupton (1848–1921), whose first cousin, Sir Thomas Martineau, was the uncle of World War II Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain.

The Duchess's maternal ancestors, the Harrisons, were working-class labourers and miners from Sunderland and County Durham. Ancestors through her maternal line include Sir Thomas Conyers, 9th Baronet (1731–1810), who was a descendant of King Edward IV through his illegitimate daughter Elizabeth Plantagenet. Other ancestors are Sir Thomas Fairfax (1475–1520) and his wife Anne Gascoigne, who was a descendant of King Edward III.