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ENGAGEMENT A4 WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2010 EDMONTON JOURNAL edmontonjournal.com Prince William and his fiancee Kate Middleton pose for photographers Tuesday as they announce their engagement, in the State Rooms of St James's Palace, London. CHRIS JACKSON, GETTY IMAGES if I 1 Prince toted Dianas ring to pop question William, Kate discuss relationship, future Daily Telegraph Prince William and Kate Middle-ton described the highs and lows of their seven-year relationship on Tuesday, in the most detailed and personal interview yet given by a royal couple. The future king and queen talked frankly about their temporary separation, the difficulties of being measured against the Prince of Wales and the late Diana, Princess of Wales, and why they delayed their engagement for so long. In stark contrast to the awkward, blushing interview given by his mother and father when they became engaged in 1981, the prince and his future bride could not have been more relaxed as they spoke to Tom Bradby, ITTSTs political editor and a long-standing friend. How they met Prince William said that after meeting at St.

Andrews University, where they were both studying history of art, "we just spent more time together, we had a good giggle and realized we shared some interests. "She has a normal sense of humour, which is really good for me because I've got a dead sense of humour, and things happened." Middleton said she "went bright red and scuttled off, feeling very shy," when she was first introduced to the prince, and denied stories that she had a picture of him on her wall as a child. "I had the Levi's guy, not a picture of William, sorry," she said. "It was me in Levi's," the prince joked. in relaxed interview ing it at all" because they were with friends.

"It was a total shock when it came, so I was very excited." The ring The prince decided to give Middleton his late mother's sapphire and diamond engagement ring, which had been kept in a safe since her death. He took it out for the trip. "I had been carrying it around with me in my rucksack for about three weeks," he said. "I literally wouldn't let it go. Everywhere we went I kept hold of it because I knew if it disappeared I would be in a lot oftrouble.

"You hear a lot of horror stories about proposing and things going horribly wrong, but I proposed and she said yes, so I'm really pleased. "I thought it was quite nice because (my mother) is not going to be around for the fun and excitement, so it's my way of keeping her close to it all." Middleton, who had given the ring back for safekeeping until Tuesday, said: "I just hope I look after it. It's very, very special." Keeping the secret "The last two or three weeks have been very difficult, keeping it to ourselves," said the prince, "so it's really nice to be able to share it with everyone. "I was torn between asking Kate's dad first and the realization that he might say no actually dawned on me, so I thought if I asked Kate first he couldn't say no." The lengthy wait The prince said he waited so long to propose because he wanted to give Middleton the opportunity to "back out" if she found the pressures of royal life too daunting a prospect. Asked if he felt protective of the Middletons as theyjoined the world's most famous family, the prince replied: "Massively so, of course.

I just want to make sure they have the best guidance and chance to see what life is like in the family. "And that's kind of almost why I have been waiting this long. Iwanted to give her a chance to see and to back out if she needed to before it all got too much." Diana Prince William insisted there was "no pressure" for Middleton to step into the shoes of his late mother, the Princess of Wales. Asked whether she found the Princess of Wales's legacy mtirnidating, she said: "Obviously, I would love to have met her, and she is obviously an inspirational woman to look up to on this day. "It is a wonderful family.

The members I have met have achieved a lot, very inspirational. So, yeah, I do." The prince added: "There's no pressure because, like Kate said, you know it's about carving your own future. "No one is trying to fill my mother's shoes. What she did is fantastic. It's about making your own future and your own destiny, and Kate will do a very good job of that." Living together The couple where sharing a house at St.

Andrews when they fell in love. "We moved in together as friends, we lived with a couple of others as well, and it just sort of blossomed from there, really," said the prince. "We just saw more of each other, hung out a bit more and did stuff." "He did cook for me quite a bit at university, and he would always come with a bit of angst and a bit of anger if something had gone wrong and I would have to wander in and save something," Middleton confided. "I would say I'm getting better at cooking. Kate would say I'm getting a lot worse," the prince laughed.

The temporary split The couple spoke openly for the first time about spHttdng up for several months in 2007. Middleton admitted that she had been angry about it at the time, but said she now looked back on it as a positive experience and admitted she had been "consumed" with the relationship. The prince said they had needed "space" at the time, but he had always known Middleton was "very special." "I wouldn't believe everything you read in the paper, but in that particular instance we did split up for a bit," he said. "We were both very young and we were both defining ourselves as such and being different characters. Bride solidly middle-class commoner Glamorous wedding, common divorce It was very much trying to find our way and we were growing up." Middleton went on: "I think if you go out with someone for quite a long time, you do get to know each other very well, you go through the good times, you go through the bad times both personally but also within our relationship as well." Meeting the Royal Family Middleton admitted to being "quite nervous" when she first met the Prince of Wales, but he was "very welcoming, very friendly and it couldn't have gone easier." When she met the Queen at the wedding of Peter Phillips, the son of the Princess Royal, in 2008, "she was very friendly and it was fine." The proposal Prince William described how he decided to propose to his girlfriend of seven years during a holiday in Kenya with friends last month.

"I just decided it was the right time really," he said. "We had been talking about marriage for a while, it wasn't a massive surprise, I took her out somewhere nice in Kenya and proposed." Middleton added: "It was very romantic, there is a true romantic in there." "There is, yes," smiled the prince. "I had been planning it for a while, but as every guy out there knows it takes a certain amount of motivation to get yourself going, so I was planning it, it just felt really right in Africa." Middleton said she "wasn't expect instead married a well-known photographer. Not long into that marriage, rumours of infidelity on both sides persisted until this marriage, too, ended in divorce in 1978. Only the Queen's youngest son, Prince Edward, the Earl of Wessex, and Sophie, the Countess of Wessex, have managed to keep their marriage together since getting hitched in 1999.

Like his mother, Edward appears to be in a scandal-free marriage, the kind that was relatively commonplace for centuries in the Royal Family when stiff upper lips and suffering in dignity was a code to live by, and divorce wasn't, ever, an option. (Canadian journalist Peter Zimonjic was based in London from 2002 to 2007.) ROYAL WEDDING Continued from Al "It's very special to me," he said. "As Kate's very special to me now, it was right to put the two together." Middleton is a different sort of royal bride from Diana, whose short life ended when she was killed after a car accident in Paris in 1997. Diana was naive and indifferently educated, but she was the daughter of an earl whose family has always mixed in royal circles. By contrast, Middleton, who grew up in Buckle-bury, West Berkshire, is considered solidly middle class by British standards.

Her father Michael is a former British Airways officer and her mother Carole a former flight attendant; together, they run a successful mailorder business that sells paraphernalia for children's parties. By all accounts, Middleton is tough and savvy, and far better equipped to deal with media attention than Diana was. Also, while Charles and Diana hardly knew each other at the time of their engagement, Middle-ton has been virtually living with William for some time and has met his father many times. The couple became engaged in October during a private holiday in Kenya, Prince Charles's announcement said. After an autumn of dismaying news about budget cuts and austerity, the engagementprovided an all-purpose happy diversion.

The BBC started providing saturation coverage of the announcement. Queen Elizabeth proclaimed herself to be "absolutely delighted." Prime Minister David Cameron said that when he announced the news, members of his cabinet responded with a "great cheer" and "banging of the table." Cameron also acknowledged that in 1981 he slept on the street outside Buckingham Palace the night before the wedding of William's parents. Prime Minister Stephen Harper sent Canada's congratulations. "It would be an honour to welcome Prince William and his bride to Canada in the future and show them the special warmth and cherished traditions that are reserved for members of the Royal Family." London pub patron Ben Miles, 32, said the Royal Family is "more important now than ever." "Who else do we have to look up to apart from shabby pop stars, page-three girls, or winners of (the TV program) Big Brother?" he said. "Now we actually have some people who are well-spoken, well-brought up and have integrity and represent our country in a way that I'm proud." William and Middleton met at the University of St.

Andrews in Scodand, and then shared a group house with two other students. According to news reports, the highlights of their college years together included the time that Middleton persuaded William not to drop out when he was having a hard time his first year and the time she took part in a charity fashion show wearing her underwear. Should Middleton become Queen Catherine, she would be the first queen in British history to have a university degree, or indeed, to have any university education at all. The couple's relationship has had its ups and downs. They split for several months in 2007, and there was speculation in the British tabloids (always denied) that the Royal Family was dismayed by the supposedly declasse behaviour of the Middletons.

With files from Peter O'Neil and Harry Wilson, Postmedia News Royal Family's recent track record not stuff of fairy tales PETER ZIMONJIC For Postmedia News As glamorous and romantic as royal weddings can be, in postwar Britain they've often lurched along miserably before ending in despair or scandal. Three of Queen Elizabeth's four children, and her sister, have divorced, sometimes in spectacular fashion. Most notably, Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer, who married in a lavish ceremony broadcast in July 1981, stayed married for 15 years. Yet not long into the marriage the couple started leading separate lives under the old royal code of "don't complain, don't explain." This dragged on until the marriage was so dysfunctional the couple sought a formal end to it. And while the marital failure of the first in line to the throne would be bad news for the Queen regardless of how it ended, the tabloid rumours, affairs and airing of private, sometimes sexual, details could not have been more disastrous to the royal marriage brand than the separation of Diana and Charles in 1992.

Charles's younger brother followed up with spectacular relationship troubles of his own. Prince Andrew's wedding to Sarah Ferguson ended after 10 years, although the Duke and Duchess of York formally separated after just six years. During the separation, the British tabloids had a riotous time following "Fergie" as she cavorted with men besides her husband while the AFPGETTY IMAGES, RLE Prince Charles and Lady Diana, Princess of Wales, wed on July 29, 1981, at St. Paul's Cathedral in London. Duke was out of the country.

In one famous incident, the Duchess was even photographed topless while an American business tycoon ap-parendy sucked her toes. The Queen's only daughter, Princess Anne, had also tarnished the idea of royal marriage when, in 1989 she announced her separation from husband, Mark Phillips, eventually divorcing in 1992. These three royal divorces may have been the undoing of the fairy tale of royal romance, but the standard by which these failed relationships were to be judged was really set by the Queen's sister earlier. Princess Margaret seemed to be foreshadowing the future when she fell in love with an older divorced man with two children of his own. But after much controversy, she.