Transcripts For CNN CNN Presents 20110501 : vimarsana.com

sons was killed in the air strike but the government claims gadhafi himself was in the building that was struck by the air strike and gadhafi s wife as well. that is causing the demonstrations in downtown tripoli. frederik pleitgen in tripoli with our breaking news. more coming up on cnn. don t go away. if it warrants it, we will break in. moammar gadhafi s youngest son killed, three of his grandchildren killed in a strike on his son s compound. more coming up. we ll have a full show at 10:00 p.m. eastern on cnn. we ll leave you with live pictures of libyan live television. a prince looking for love. catherine and prince william have been going out together. a commoner destined to be queen. my mother s engagement ring. it s my way of making sure she doesn t miss out today. it s quite a daunting prospect. a great day for the royal family. reporter: one family hoping to get it right this time around. princess diana has died. reporter: all haunted by memories of a fairytale gone turned tragedy. trying to get away from the paparazzi. i m looking forward to seeing what the future holds. reporter: will this time be different? april 29th, 2011, westminster abbey, the location of the much anticipated wedding of prince william and catherine middleton. ironically it was this abbey where his mother, princess diana, was laid to rest in 1997. and in the years between that memorial and this celebration, the legacy of diana and the tragedy of her life were critical in prince william s journey to the altar. i think she s probably never far from his mind. i think he thinks about her every day. jules knight says he s been friends with prince william for more than a decade. did he give any inklings about the relationship that he had with his mother. i think it was evident to everybody that they were incredibly close. he mentioned on a number of occasions she was never far from his mine. when you re going through these rites of passage growing up and you don t have that incredibly important figure in your life, it must be incredibly difficult because you say, oh, i wish my mom was here for that. rites of passage that were not easy given the difficulty of growing up in a broken home. he went through the pain of the divorce. he then went through the agony of his mother s death, and it must have had an incredibly profound effect on the way he then wanted to conduct his own relationships. reporter: despite diana s best efforts, her sons grew up in the same type of contentious home as she did. diana was just 7. half william s age when her family was also shattered by a bitter divorce and nasty custody battle. so this is the room where diana was born? yes, this is where diana was born. reporter: mary clark was diana s nanny. she said i will never, ever marry unless i m really in love. because if you are not in love, are you going to get divorced, and i never intend to be divorced. she never had a happy centered home life. i think she spent her adult life searching for that. reporter: christopher anderson, who s written several books about the royal family, says that in diana s search for a happy home life, she had a unique confidante william. as a small boy william witnessed a lot of this and william became sort of the fixer. here s the little boy when his mother locks herself in the bathroom after an argument with charles and she s sobbing and here is 7-year-old little william slipping tissues under the door and saying, i hate to see you sad, mommy. he was always somebody who was just very, very sensitive to other people s feelings, so he walks into the situation with kate, he meets kate, and kate exposes him to a happy family for the first time. stability? stability. reporter: a happiness and normalcy that diana was desperate for her sons to find. her close friend lana marks remembers. she wanted to have them experience as much of a normal life or exposure to a normal life as possible. she also wanted to make sure they shared enormous love. william! william! william. but finding love would not be easy for the prince, the heir apparent to the british monarchy. william lived with a prying camera lens keenly focused on his every move. a spotlight that followed him from a very early age. i remember william s first day of pre-prep school in north london. ken was prince william and diana s bodyguard for more than eight years. diana said to him, now, when we get to school, there will be lots of photographers. he said, i don t like tographers in a sort of very williamesque way. we arrived at the school and there outside the school, about 120 or 130 photographers were waiting for women s first day of school. what she was trying to say to william on his first day of school, you have to live with this. you are going to get this the rest of your life. he now knows that. princess diana has died. reporter: that is, until his mother s death. the french police criminal unit. reporter: an accident that many, including william. paparazzi and photographers following princess diana s car at high speed. reporter: blamed on the aggressive paparazzi. i think he drew a picture of i didn t like them and wasn t prepared to debate the subject. reporter: not long after the crash, the palace and the press forged a gentleman s agreement giving both william and his brother harry the privacy to grow up. the world got quick glimpses though, all carefully choreographed by the palace. aside from that, william seemed to shun the media. with that distance, he was able to grow up and sow his wild oats. he began dating some of the more beautiful titled ladies. he tried an online romance with britney spears at one point that never really got off the ground. it was a year in between eaton and going to university in scotland that william worked in kenya and met the woman that many say was his first love. jecka craig. they became romantically involved. he staged a mock engagement. it was kind of a tongue in cheek kind of thing. he asked her to marry him jokingly at the foot of mt. kenya. reporter: a place that will ironically play a key role in his engagement to kate middleton, but that later. first, william would have to meet kate, and that would happen at st. andrews university. why would he go there? i mean, all the other royals had gone there. i think an attempt to get away from the public eye to some extend. i met him as soon as we arrived. incredibly quickly, this group of friends formed. reporter: among his small intimate group of friends, a young woman whose background was anything but royal. i actually went bright red when i met you and sort of scuttled off. ahead, when william met kate. the awkward meeting that almost never happened. 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[ dog ] i am an iams dog. woof. fall, 2001, st. andrews, scotland. kate middleton met her prince. i turned bright red when i met you and sort of scuttled off feeling very shy about meeting you. not long after william invited a number of friends to his dormitory room. she did this kind of automatically did this kind of awkward courtesy and he reacted by spilling his drink on himself and he realized he would do things like this putting people at ease and from that point on they became friendly. in contrast to kate, most of william s friends were arrest kra tick with royal connections, connections william s mother knew throughout most of her life. princess diana grew up in the shadows of a royal family. her grandmother a confidant of the queen. diana was an aristocrat through and through. kate is what the british called a commoner. she grew up a world away from country estates and buckingham palace. it s in an area of outstanding natural beauty. reporter: john hailey is an innkeeper near kate s hometown, bucklebury berkshire. a small sleepy village 55 miles west of london. he met the middletons 14 years ago when they first came into his pub, the old boot inn. they are very nice, a very nice family, down to earth. very easy going, relaxed, a lovely family. they were notal wealthy. solidly middle class. solidly middle class, hard working folks. carole goldsmith and michael milton met while working for a british airline. they married in 1980. kate was born in 1982. her early years were as ordinary as you can imagine. baptized at a picturesque chapel. she was a brownie and liked to perform in plays and musicals. a simple life in the quiet english countryside. friends say the closest the middletons got to the royals was watching stories of them on tv. a marriage that captivated. when charles married diana in 1981 like the rest of the planet earth, they were glued to the set and watching every minute of it. of course, carole dreamed someday of having her daughter enter that life, but it seemed an impossible dream, i m sure. impossible, that is, until carol middleton, a stay-at-home mother stumbled on to a very lucrative career. she had a talent for making goody bags for children s parties, and she really spun it into this internet empire. the family quickly moved up the ladder and within a couple of years they were making millions of dollars a year. hence kate was sent to some of the most expensive and prestigious schools. kate was 13 years old when she arrived at this conclusive school in the english countryside called down house, a school that catered to nobility and aristocracy. when she stepped on campus she was an outgoing girl who loved sports and learning, but soon that all changed. she became the victim of the mean girls in the school. there was malicious gossip about her background because she was one of the very few girls from a working class background attending that school. many say kate became miserable, shy and withdrawn, much like diana when she first went to boarding school. she was very shy, so i didn t really notice her. penny walker, diana s music teacher at the west heath school remembers. there was an awful lot of unrest in her home life. that often affects children in their work. were her bad grades troubling to her? oh, i think immensely troubling, and i think she tried really hard, but i think her concentration was elsewhere. on what? family. with absentee parents, diana was forced to struggle through on her own. many say that the insecurity fostered in these years would stay with her for the rest of her life. it was very different for kate middleton though. her parents immediately switched their daughter to another nearby boarding school, marlborough college. and the lessons she learned would make her stronger. marlborough was a big school. i was there from the age of 13 to 18. olli was a student with kate at marlborough and now a performer with the singing group blake. boarding schools if they are not happy are miserable. there s very, very few in between. and kate s first day at marlborough wouldn t be easy. all the boys are on the other side of the dining hall. they hold up pieces of paper. on the paper is numbers. she asked what that s about. the guys always rate the girl. she was rated nothing more than a 2. of 10? 2 out of 10. carole middleton stepped in. she got her wearing makeup for the first time so when she reappeared in school it was a new person. kate became one of the most popular girls here at marlborough, a tremendous student, serious athlete and had the reputation of having a wild side. one friend said kate liked to frequently moon the boys from her dorm room window and it earned her the nickname kate middlebum. it was a reasonably happy school. it was great fun and she was a very pretty girl. yet, kate didn t date much, and despite her denials, many who knew her then insist she set her sights higher than prep school classmates. i talked to too many friends who said, yes, she always had this picture over her bed in her dormitory, a picture of william so she did have her sights set on him. eerily reminiscent of another young girl decades earlier. she was always known to adore prince charles, and her little bedroom cubicle had pictures all over it. while diana knew charles from the royal circles they traveled in, kate didn t know william at all, but nearly had a chance in the winter of 2000. after her graduation from marlborough both kate and william traveled to chile with the same volunteer youth group but it turned out at different times. malcolm sutherland was their expedition leader. it s incredible for a fact that william and kate didn t even know each other. they just missed each other. on two separate trips just weeks apart they helped build buildings, teach english and even clean toilets in the same small town in chile. kate is a tough, a sporty, fit lady. she knew what she was about. she knew how to look after herself. while kate missed william that winter, she then started preparing for university, and this time she wouldn t miss her prince. originally kate wanted to go to edinburgh university. when it was announced by the palace that william would be attending st. andrew s university, enrollment among women at st. andrew s jumped overnight by over 40%. clearly carole was a very hands-on present watchful mother. in case s case did she nudge her towards a relationship with the future king of england, yes, and why not? you know, because by putting her in proximity to william, magic happened. a close friendship takes a passionate turn when we come back. 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[ female announcer ] grab a box of multigrain cheerios. get a code to. .a 7 day plan to get going on your summer weight loss. get the box. get the code. get started! it s a night that rocked st. andrews university every year. a night that eight years ago shook up prince william and kate middleton s friendship forever. march, 2002. the annual charity fashion show called don t walk. a lingerie show. the models were nearly naked. kate was no exception. jules knight was in the audience that night with prince william. she looked great. reporter: were people stunned? definitely. she wasn t what you call a risque girl. a safe bet, quite conservative in the way she dressed and acted and here she was not wearing that much, looking amazing. all the guys, all of a sudden realized wow. kate s hot. kate s hot. he really wanted to start something. that was the point he pursued her romantically and quickly. reporter: up to that night, william and kate s friendship had been purely platonic. prince william remembers fondly. we were friends for over a year first. it sort of blossomed from then on. reporter: they bonded over their shared major of art history, early morning swims in the campus pool, and their sense of humor. she s got a really nice sense of humor. it was good fun. we had a really good laugh and then things happened. you would often see them sitting on a radiator at a house party and he would have a bottle of jd by him and sort of drinking away and able to conduct their relationship and get to know each other as friends. reporter: life with prince william was quite the party. i remember, we walked out of a pub, we were quite drunk, walking down the street, about ten of us. i saw a pellet gun on the floor, i picked it up and started waving it around. he grabbed it out of my jacket pocket and holding it in the air, and suddenly even in my drunk state i was like this is probably not a good idea. what does this look like from behind, and i remember looking behind, and there were these bodyguards looking incredibly agitated. like, what the hell is going on? reporter: kate always managed to stay in control. richard denning was another friend at st. andrews. i wouldn t say that she was particularly flighty, overexcitable type person. very measured. very controlled. that is perfect. you don t want someone who is going to be falling down on the king s road wasted after a session. william came to rely on kate in good times and in bad. he had all the same stresses and pressures as every student does. for some people reporter: charles warren was one of william s lecturers at st. andrews. he was panicking about approaching deadlines and struggling with it like most students do. the first year was really tough for william. he felt completely isolated from his friends and family. he was so desperately unhappy that after the first year he was determined to leave, and it was really kate who talked him into staying. she said, look, we ll both stick it out together and if at the end of sophomore year we feel the same way we ll leave. reporter: they stuck it out and in their second year moved into this flat together with a couple other friends. it blossomed from there. we saw more of each other. hung out a bit more and did stuff. you didn t like my cooking. the cooking was all right. it got better. and it was in that spring of living together in 2002 that kate hit the lingerie runway william saw his close friend in a very different light. they quickly became more than just roommates. being friends with one is a massive advantage. reporter: the idea of a prince living with his girlfriend was unheard of for the house of windsor. diana was 19 when she dated prince charles. she lived here in a flat in london. he lived miles away in the palace. the entire courtship lasted just five months, and once they were engaged, diana was whisked away to the queen mother s palace. she lost her independence. she would send little notes like that. reporter: dr. james colter, a close friend of diana s, remembers how abandoned she felt. despite her aristocratic roots, she never seemed at home in the palace. was she incredibly lonely? did she tell you that? absolutely. she wanted the prince to talk to her. she was expecting romantic calls and things like that, and i think there was very little communication. i think she found it very difficult. if that s how it was, she will bite her lip and hope it gets better after the wedding. reporter: it didn t. no one knew that better than prince william. he would do it differently. he would get to know kate and her family intimately. in those early dating days, william would travel to kate s home in the english countryside often. he started visiting the middleton s home in bucklebury and he saw indeed it was possible to have a happy family and a happy marriage in the middletons, and i think that s a big reason that kate is the one. she s not an aristocrat. she s not somebody who has grown up in a castle or a palace. she s sort of pretty normal really, and i think that he loves going for dinner around the house in berkshire, and he loves being part of something which is actually standard. reporter: local pub owner and middleton friend john hailey would remember when william would come to town. they used to come in and book a table or just walk in. people would notice him but he would be left alone. reporter: soon, that would all change. when the world discovered these roommates were more than just friends. we re thinking about them. a couple decades ago, we didn t even realize just how much natural gas was trapped in rocks thousands of feet below us. technology has made it possible to safely unlock this cleanly burning natural gas. this deposits can provide us with fuel for a hundred years, providing energy security and economic growth all across this country. it just takes somebody having the idea, and that s where the discovery comes from. host: could switching to geico or more on car insurance?dea, host: would foghleghorn make a really bad boonaor? foghn (stammerg): it was the best of time it was the wor - y worst of times. and by worst i m talkin athat stuffl yone.ad asau nny p engineer: ok that was a little. foghorn: you gettin all this in there son? i just added that last part it s called adlibbin. anyway.it was, i say it was. vo: geico. 15 minutes could save you 15% or more on car insurae. 100 ways to enjoy pringles. and they re the same price as the leading bag chips. 100 crisps. 100 ways. everything pops with pringles. personal pricing now on brakes. tell us what you want to pay. we do our best to make that work. deal! my money. my choice. my meineke. the swiss alps. a holiday hot spot for the royal family. march 2004, prince william was about to let the world in on a secret. the thing is, they were sharing a house in st. andrews. we suspected, but you never know. reporter: for several years journalists like photographer arthur edwards were left to wonder if william and kate middleton were a couple despite denials from the palace and prince william. but that all changed on that spring day. with paparazzi in tow, william took to the slopes with his new love. we discovered they were, in fact, an item. reporter: it was ironically on the ski slopes exactly ten years earlier that princess diana had begged the paparazzi for privacy for her boys. as a parent, could i ask you to respect my children s space. reporter: now, a decade later, her grown-up son took charge. friend juls jules knight. was that sort of an intentional we are going to let people know? of course. you take somebody skiing at the place your family has been going for the last how many years, there s a clear sign that he s saying to everybody, this is the girl in my life. reporter: newspapers ran with the story. headlines like this, finally, wills gets a girl. for the first time, the palace didn t deny the romance. the couple would retreat behind the protective walls of st. andrews. for the next year, they continued to live together, now without other roommates. they quietly spent more time with the royal family, and it became clear to many that despite her common upbringing kate fit in, perhaps even better than princess diana. kate has shown absolutely no hesitation to accompany them on hunting trips in balmoral and go fishing. diana could barelile lly tolere going to the polo matches of charles but kate has never missed a polo match of william s. reporter: june 2005. the private life william and kate enjoying for nearly four years came to an end. william wales. [ applause ] they graduated from st. andrews and left their safe, protected world behind and plunged into a world of prying paparazzi. catherine middleton. there were more photographers than i had seen in my life, from around the world, like 100 and the noise of the cameras going off and the flashes was intense. it was just, you know, unbelievable. i think everyone realized the game was over because the protection they had enjoyed had finished. reporter: in the months after graduation, the press followed them everywhere, weddings, polo matches. there were rumors of a breakup. fleet street was on fire, and in january 2006 it only got worse. william began his royal military training in the english countryside, leaving kate alone in london. he was beginning his military career in essence around a lot of other young men who were going to make their lives in the military. there was a lot of heavy drinking going on and partying going on. reporter: was he faithful to her with the drinking and the partying? yes, he was. there were indiscreet moments in bars when girls would come up to him, and there would be kissing. she handled it well. she wasn t happy with it but she didn t end the relationship. it was probably difficult on their relationship. she was having scrutiny from the press. she walked out of her flat and be besieged by 20, 30 photographers and that couldn t go on. it was chaos. they would follow her to work and stop her in traffic with her flashing through the window while she was trying to drive her car. sitting on the wall at her office, waiting for her to leave and to arrive. that s when it s really stressful. excuse me. hey! hey! hey! reporter: all reminiscent of what happened to his mother. look at the images. for diana and kate, both taken before she was engaged. for diana, the pressure was often too much to bear. i remember once diana ran into a doorway and was crying. for kate, it was different. despite her young age she was very smart and guarded with the press. kate s friend, richard denning. a nightclub that everyone goes to in south kensington. she was famous for nipping into the bathroom and checking her hair and makeup before she left because she knew there were photographers waiting outside. reporter: while kate publicly held her own, privately there were serious concerns. she was not his fiancee and therefore she was not entitled to technically any bodyguards. william is surrounded by body guards at all times. he realized, you know, she was pretty much on her own. he was afraid for her. reporter: on several occasions, kate s lawyers, the same used by the royal family asked newspaper editors to leave kate alone. they even threatened lawsuits. it helped a little, but kate was still a target, just like princess diana. and according to christopher anderson, prince william who had always had nightmares about the night his mother died now had nightmares about kate. the accident happening isn t happening in the streets of paris, but in the streets of london and happening to kate. reporter: he worries about kate? at one point he said i was born into this. she wasn t, and should i be subjecting her to this? so this was a constant question in their relationship. reporter: a question that would drive the couple apart. i, building up our wireless network all across america. we re adding new cell sites. increasing network capacity, and investing billions of dollars to improve your wireless network experience. from a single phone call to the most advanced data download, we re covering more people in more places than ever before in an effort to give you the best network possible. at&t. rethink possible. times were tough for prince william and kate middleton. the paparazzi in hot pursuit, six years dating, no engagement. the pressure was intense. happy birthday. january 2007, kate s 25th birthday. the inquest into diana s death is raging. headlines every day about the circumstances leading to diana s death. there s a party for kate at their favorite nightclub. they come out and they are descended on by hundreds of paparazzi. huge response of bodyguards that shove into the land rovers as they speed away, but it was a moment that it became quite obvious that it was just history repeating itself. reporter: lawyers for william, the palace and the middletons lashed out. two newspapers stopped publishing paparazzi photo, but the pressure on william and kate was still mounting. according to biographer christopher anderson, everything came to a head on valentine s day 2007. she thought she would be getting that proposal. instead, he gave her an enamel compact. they started to quarrel bitterly. she demanded that he commit, as they say. william wasn t ready for it. he went to his father, prince charles. prince charles said you can t keep stringing this girl along. if you re not ready to ask her to marry you, break it off, and, unfortunately, he listened to his father s advice. reporter: a father trying to prevent history from repeating itself. charles would have been happy staying a bachelor indefinitely. mary robertson was diana spencer s boss and friend when she was dating prince charles in 1980. i think there was a great deal of pressure from his mother and father to get married and produce some heirs for the throne, and i think diana was just sort of the right girl at the right time and the right place. reporter: insiders say charles did care deeply for diana but was pressured to marry before he was ready. no surprise their son william would not be pressured to propose. one day kate was at work when her cell phone rang. she was an accessories buyer for this clothing company. it was william. she gets a call on the cell phone and goes into the back room. the other employees can hear what s going on. it s not pretty. he s breaking it off. she doesn t want it to happen. there s an emotional conversation going on but it s the big breakup call. reporter: the sun newspaper broke the news, april 14th, 2007. people were stunned. kate looked grim. she packed up and headed home to her parents. she s devastated. kate s mother,le carole says, well, fight to get him back. don t be defeated. reporter: friends say it didn t take long to rebound. st. andrews buddy and singer in the boy bland blake, jules knight. i remember having lunch with her when they split up. it was quite evident that she was being very forthright. she said, i m getting on with my life, fine, cool. it hasn t worked out. that s behind me. let s move on. reporter: how did prince william react to the break-up? he became unglued. he really started drinking too much. he went out with his buddies to various clubs. he was very obviously adrift emotionally. it didn t help to have him see pictures of kate having the time of her life. out on the thames training for a cross-channel race or out on the town enjoying life as a single woman. she s a smart girl. she made sure she wasn t going to run back to him. she was very calm and level-headed and strong about it and i think he thought, oh, my god, what have i done? reporter: she s going to go out and hang out with other people. i think he thought actually, i really want to be with this girl. reporter: nearly three months later, there were hints they were getting back together. you find out things about yourself that you haven t realized. i really valued that time for me as well although i didn t think it at the time. reporter: july 1, 2007. princess diana s memorial concert. i went to the after concert party, and they were just like normal. i imagine that s when they i think made the decision that perhaps they were going to get married. reporter: for the next three years, the couple would settle into life. william in the military, kate by his side for graduations, ceremonies and other people s weddings. then, october 2010, the wait was finally over. it was a remote spot on the slopes of mt. kenya, africa s second highest peak called rotundu. a romantic lodge with a fireplace and lots of candles. ironically, not far from where a decade earlier, william supposedly proposed to his first love. this time, it was kate. i took her up somewhere nice in kenya and proposed. it was very romantic. there s a truro m true romantc in there. you said yes? of course, yes. reporter: in that secluded lodge, he gave kate a ring. they were not alone. it was my mother s engagement ring. i thought it was quite nice because obviously she s not going to be around to share in all the fun and excitement and this is my way of keeping her sort of close to it all. reporter: ahead, ring on her finger, smile on her face, but is kate really ready for what lies ahead? 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[ male announcer ] the inspiration for its shape was an archer drawing his bow. could that have also inspired its 556 horsepower supercharged engine? the all-new cadillac cts-v coupe. we don t just make luxury cars, we make cadillacs. we have a few questions. reporter: the first time most of the world would hear kate middleton speak. would you tell us how prince william proposed? it was very romantic. what was it that you both love about each other? reporter: st. james palace, november 16, 2010. william and kate s engagement announcement. it s quite a daunting prospect but hopefully i ll take it in my stride. william is a great teacher so he ll be able to help me along the way. reporter: the confidence of a couple who seemingly worked it all out. what every relationship does. we picked ourselves up and carried on. it s really easy being with each other. i m obviously extremely funny and she loves that. it s been good. you say so yourself. reporter: a bit of humor in the face of unprecedented media attention. just hang on a second. masses of people in there for that. the questions were fired. she coped with it very well. he was so proud. it wasn t like his father and mother with six photographers and two reporters. reporter: three decades earlier, a shy, soft spoken diana seemed woefully unprepared for what lay ahead. has it been a strain trying to carry out a courtship without anyone knowing? what do you think? yes, it has. reporter: and painfully unconnected to her fiance. the world caught a glimpse with charles awkward admission. and i suppose in love. of course. whatever in love means. reporter: diana and charles seemed miles apart emotionally and physically. in the months leading up to the wedding, diana was sequestered behind the gates and guards of this palace, clarence house and charles was on the move splitting his time between the country estate highgrove and his london residence and st. james palace and traveling to places as far away as australia. diana was always left behind. she was floating around in the queen mother s house without really a brief of what to do. she could have had coaching. this is about to become a large job. you have to learn stuff, geography bits of history valid in the modern age, maybe even political stuff. there was nothing. it was assumed she knew what she was walking into because she was of their class. she was an aristocrat. reporter: she was one of them. yes. reporter: kate would get all the coaching diana sorely lacked. pre-marital counseling of the archbishop of canterbury. i can t think of any royal couple less in need of pre-marital couple. they worked it out already, but they are willing to go through the motions of this sort of thing and she s going to go through the motions of how to behave in front of the press. in terms of specific ceremonial duties, royal etiquette, there are things she needs to be taught. reporter: diana got none of that? no. reporter: february 24th will be kate s first test. her first official appearance in north wales dedicating a life boat. william was by her side. she learned to sing the welsh national anthem and smiled at the right time and coped with the wind beautifully and she shook hands with the old and the young. when they were launching the life boat and after she poured the champagne william bowed to her with her hands like that, an acknowledgement that this was her first public engagement and she did it brilliantly. reporter: yet their lives are not dictated by palace and protocol. unlike past royal couples, william and kate settled far from london s palaces in a small house in remote north wales. william is an raf rescuer and it s a dangerous business. he plucks hikers off mountaintops and meanwhile kate is keeping the home fires burning at their little house in north wales. no one cooking dinner and cleaning the brass. cleaning. it s going to be different than charles and diana. no big stately home. not yet anyway. he s going to go to work, do his shift, come home, chill, watch tv, probably go and get a video, get some pizza. that s the way they are going to live their life. it was the way kate grew up in rural bucklebury, normal, quiet. once criticized as too common, it may be the very thing that helps keep this royal couple together. a lot of aristocrats are the least able to deal with that kind of thing. they didn t often have a firm grasp of what it was like to live in the real world. i would say she s much better equipped to deal with the pressures of royal life than the average aristocrat was. ironically. ironically. unlike diana, of course, kate middleton has been with william now nearly eight years, so she s had quite a lot of time a to reflect and say is this a lifestyle i want? this is what i m going to get for the rest of my life. in that sense, she was a considerable way ahead of diana in knowing exactly what was coming her way. for william, history would not repeat itself. it s kind of almost why i had waited this long. i wanted to give her a chance to see and back out if she needed to, before it got too much. i m not trying to learn from lessons done in the past. i wanted to give her the best chance to settle in and see what happens on the other side. reporter: do you think everyone s got it right this time? finally, they have it right. it s all because of diana. if diana hadn t shaken things up the way she did, made the monarchy collective look itself in the mirror and see what they were doing wrong and what they could do right, none of these changes would have happened, and i think the true catalyst for all this change now is kate. because in essence, you know, she s going to be the first true people s princess. reporter: the people s princess like diana before her but unlike diana, prepared for what lies ahead. a royal couple living life on their own terms. making their own way to the day they will become the king and queen of england.