Angry at Diana? A wanna-be cop? And a shared trait with Harry Potter?
Keep watching to find out what else you don't know about the new Prince of Wales.
When King Charles and Princess Diana welcomed their firstborn son,
the couple did not see eye to eye on his name. Charles had a very specific name in mind,
one that conjured up Britain's ancient past.
According to historian Robert Lacey, Charles' preferred name for the future king was Arthur,
in honor of the legendary British monarch who founded the Knights of the Round Table
and slayed his foes with the mystical sword dubbed Excalibur. Diana, however, had a very
different idea, suggesting they, instead, name the baby after William the Conqueror,
who took the throne by winning the bloody Battle of Hastings in 1066.
Ultimately, the couple reached a compromise of sorts, deciding to name their son William
Arthur Philip Louis. Philip, of course, is in honor of William's grandfather, Prince Philip,
while Louis was chosen in tribute to Lord Louis Mountbatten, the uncle of Charles' father.
"Dear Princess Diana and Prince Charles. Congratulations on the birth of your new baby."
Despite Princess Diana's best efforts to provide her sons with as normal an upbringing as possible,
it's fair to say that Prince William's childhood was pretty out of the ordinary. One great example
of that is when the teenage prince suddenly found himself face-to-face with several of
the world's top supermodels. As William said in the documentary Diana, Our Mother: Her Life and
Legacy, the whole thing was a surprise his mother had cooked up for his birthday. William said,
"When I came home from school [she organized] to have Cindy Crawford,
Christy Turlington and Naomi Campbell waiting at the top of the stairs."
He said that he was around 12 or 13 and had posters of the women on his bedroom walls, adding,
"And I went bright red and didn't quite know what to say and sort of fumbled."
Interviewing Crawford for her No Filter with Naomi podcast, Campbell clarified
that it was actually she, Turlington, and Claudia Schiffer who surprised William,
but confirmed that William did, indeed, blush during the encounter.
The relationship between Prince William's
parents hit a particularly rough patch in the mid-1990s. It was irreparably broken, however,
when Princess Diana sat down for her infamous interview with journalist Martin Bashir for
BBC's Panorama in 1995. Diana went rogue, opening up about her struggles with bulimia, and confirmed
rampant rumors that husband Prince Charles was enmeshed in an affair with Camilla Parker-Bowles.
"Well, there were three of us in this marriage. So it was a bit crowded."
Diana's scorched-earth revelations not only sent shockwaves throughout the royal family,
but they also had a deep impact on young William. According to Penny Junor's biography,
Prince William: Born To Be King, William was attending boarding school at the time.
Prior to the Panorama episode airing on TV, Diana visited William at school,
promising the interview would not include anything controversial.
Not surprisingly, William felt blindsided when he watched. According to Junor,
the prince was angry at what his mother had done.
Had he not been the firstborn male son of the heir to the throne of England,
Prince William may have gone down an entirely different vocational path. As he divulged
in an interview with the BBC, he had once considered a career in law enforcement, saying,
"A long time ago I wanted to be a policeman,
when I was younger. I soon learnt that probably wasn't a good idea."
However, it's likely that William's fleeting desire to be a cop may have had psychological
roots stemming from his childhood desire to protect his mother. In an excerpt from his book,
William's Princess, journalist Robert Jobson wrote that Princess Diana, quote, "leaned
heavily on her eldest son in her times of need — times when William was still just a little boy."
One of the distinguishing features of Prince William's visage is a prominent
scar on his forehead, just above his eyebrow near his left temple. In a 2009 BBC interview,
William revealed the scar was the result of being accidentally hit on the head when
he was younger. William refers to it as his "Harry Potter scar," referencing novelist J.K.
Rowling's fictional wizard who sports a lightning bolt-shaped scar on his forehead. He told BBC,
"I call it that because it glows sometimes and some people notice
it — other times they don't notice it at all."
While William would love for his scar to have some dramatic origin story,
the truth is not all that dramatic. He told BBC, "I got hit by a golf club when I was playing
golf with a friend of mine. We were on a putting green and the next thing you know
there was a seven-iron and it came out of nowhere and it hit me in the head."
The blow to his head, he added, was severe enough that he needed to be hospitalized.
During his early 20s, Prince William became enamored with surfing. In fact, BBC News
reported in 2004 that he and a college friend were spotted hitting the waves. According to William,
he enjoyed the solitude of the sport, particularly when underwater. He said of the experience,
"There's no noise. It's just you breathing. You're in a different world with the fish."
Of course, his experience may have been a bit different had he ventured to Hawaii
or Australia. Instead, William's surfing adventure took place off the
coast of Scotland — in October. Of being submerged in the frigid North Atlantic,
he said he couldn't feel his hands for about a half hour, adding,
"It was a bit like putting your head in a freezer when you went under water,
but the wetsuit I've got is pretty good."
According to Surfer Today, William has also been spotted surfing in Portugal,
where the water was, hopefully, warmer and didn't require a wetsuit.
As young men, Prince William and younger brother Prince Harry lived together in
Clarence House. Apparently, the brothers had similarly sized feet, leading Harry to
allegedly wear his older brother's shoes on occasion — either by accident or by design.
According to a report in The Telegraph, William was attending a charity gala
when observers noticed the letter "W" written on the soles of each of his shoes,
an apparent attempt to make sure he was wearing the right shoes.
As it turned out, William wasn't the only one to stake his claim to a pair
of shoes to avoid confusion. In 2015, reported PopSugar,
Harry attended the WellChild Awards in London, where he was photographed
with brass shoe tacks on the soles of his footwear that spelled out the letter "H."
Prince William and Kate Middleton's wedding was no ordinary exchange of vows,
but a royal extravaganza that cost $34 million and
was reportedly viewed by more than 2 billion people throughout the world.
"Til death us do part."
With the nuptials taking place within Westminster Abbey, William was worried that if he began to
perspire while wearing his heavy military garb, it could result in unsightly pit-stains that no
royal would ever want to be seen with. As tailor Russell Kashket of Kashket and Partners told the
Daily Mail, William had expressed concern that not only would he become a sweaty mess
beneath the hot lights in the Abbey, but that he might actually faint from the heat — never
a good look on one's wedding day. As a result, the tailors added sweat-absorbing pads under
the arms of William's jacket and reduced the amount of padding. Kashket said of the look,
"We worked together to get the look he wanted,
while making sure he didn't pass out in front of two billion people."
When a married man is regularly seen out and about without wearing his wedding ring,
rumors are almost certainly going to spark. However, this doesn't apply to Prince William,
who is never seen in public wearing a wedding band. There's a simple reason for that:
He doesn't want to and doesn't have to. As a St. James' Palace aide told the Daily Mail, William,
quote, "isn't one for jewelry" and simply decided he'd rather go without a ring. In
making that decision, William followed the example of his grandfather, Prince Philip,
who never once wore a wedding band during the course of his 73-year marriage to Queen Elizabeth.
Peter York, co-author of The Official Sloane Ranger Handbook, offered an
explanation for why aristocratic British men eschew rings. York told The Telegraph,
"It is code, like so many of these things. There is a group of upper-class people
who think the less of that stuff you wear the better, less bling."
While there's a perception that royal parenting involves nannies doing the bulk of the work
while fathers play polo and hunt pheasant, Prince William seemingly shattered those expectations.
"And he's perfected his royal wave, Hugh."
According to a 2013 report from Vanity Fair, William prepped for fatherhood by immersing
himself in Commando Dad: Basic Training, a parenting manual written by former Royal
Engineer Commando Neil Sinclair, a guide loosely based on the British Army's basic battle skills.
As Sinclair wrote for The Telegraph, his aim was to give other first-time fathers a,
quote, "clear, concise manual offering straightforward advice on the practical
skills [they] would need to be an effective dad."
The hands-on parenting style of William and wife Kate Middleton has certainly
endeared them to fans, but the queen? Not so much. According to a 2018 report in Express,
Her Majesty didn't understand the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge spending time
with their children in the kitchen. Apparently, the queen couldn't stand that particular habit,
because she's always viewed kitchens as a place where staff prepare meals,
certainly an inappropriate locale for royals to congregate.
Among Prince William's various duties and assorted titles is one that positively
drips with showbiz glamor: president of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts,
a role he's held since 2010. Each year, the academy hosts a star-studded award
show honoring the best of British film and television, known as the BAFTAs,
the British equivalent of the Oscars and the Emmys combined into one.
William has been a fixture at the BAFTAs each year since becoming president, a title previously held
by his grandfather, Prince Philip, who became BAFTA's very first president back in 1959.
During the 2020 awards, William poked fun at Netflix series The Crown,
which dramatizes the lives of the royals.
"Everything I do seems to horrify you!"
"Increasingly, yes!"
Noting he was proud to have been BAFTA's president for a decade, William quipped in his speech,
"I must admit I don't know whether I should be proud, or slightly alarmed,
about the number of winners over the last decade who have portrayed members of my own family."