Queen Elizabeth Reportedly Loved This One Thing About Kate Middleton That Princess Diana Lacked

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Kate Middleton and Princess Diana had very different journeys to becoming Princess of Wales. Diana married Prince Charles, now King Charles III, in July 1981, after a one-year courtship. She had just turned 20 a few weeks before. On the other hand, Kate met William, Prince of Wales in 2001 and began dating him around 2003, eight full years before she became an official member of the royal family in April 2011. The late Queen Elizabeth II appreciated those differences.

The monarch learned painful lessons from Diana and Charles' tumultuous marriage and was reportedly glad to see a different path unfolding for the new generation, according to royal author Tina Brown. She wrote in her 2022 book, "The Palace Papers" (via Daily Mail), "For the Queen, the wedding day brought a special satisfaction. This new, 29-year-old granddaughter-in-law, the future Queen Consort, was unlike the child bride Diana, road-tested in resilience as well as royal life." Elizabeth felt confident that Kate would flourish in the role not only because she had years to prove she had what it takes, but because the queen admired her new daughter-in-law's background.

"She had three out of her four children divorce, so I think she liked the fact that her grandson was marrying into a really close family who have stuck together through thick and thin," Ailsa Anderson, a former press secretary to the late queen, told Hello! in 2026. Diana's parents, by contrast, not only divorced when she was a kid, but her mother also lost custody of her children. Kate and Diana were different in many ways, and Elizabeth saw it as a good omen.

Princess Diana seemingly knew her relationship with the now-King Charles III stood on shaky ground when they tied the knot. "We met 13 times and we got married," she said in the 1992 tapes featured in the 2017 documentary, "Diana: In Her Own Words" (via ABC News). Just hours before she was set to become the Princess of Wales, Diana expressed doubts about marrying Charles. "My wedding day, I think that was the worst day of my life," she was also recorded saying on a separate occasion (via CNN). By that point, Diana was well aware of Charles' relationship with Camilla Parker-Bowles, now Queen Camilla.

The marriage appeared to be doomed from the start. The story of William and Catherine, Prince and Princess of Wales, played out entirely differently, as illustrated by the couples' engagement announcements seen above. While their long courtship was subject of ridicule in the press (which dubbed Kate Middleton "Waity Katie"), it may have been key to her smooth transition into the royal family. "I think the 10-year courtship that she and William had was really crucial to her success as a royal," Katie Nicholl, author of "The New Royals: Queen Elizabeth's Legacy and the Future of the Crown," told Fox News Digital in 2022. 

Kate and William's long relationship is also said to have given Queen Elizabeth II peace of mind about the state of her grandson's — and the monarchy's — future. Elizabeth, known for her stoicism, reportedly couldn't hide how she felt on the day of William and Kate's wedding. Tina Brown reported in "The Palace Papers" that the queen turned to her husband, Prince Philip, to say: "That was really excellent, wasn't it?" (via Daily Mail).