Prince William and Kate Middleton’s Relationship 2003-2007

As A Dodo departs from its reports of bereavements in the public eye with the following obituary of an ordinary relationship between two hitherto unknown twentysomethings.

The relationship of ‘Prince’ William - an officer in the Household Cavalry’s Blues and Royals and the son of an eccentric biscuit manufacturer and a kindergarten teacher - and Kate Middleton - a fashion buyer for a high street store born into a middle-class family of toy manufacturers - has ended after failing to attract any interest whatsoever in the media or, more crucially, with the public at large.

This very ordinary relationship began, as so many do, when the couple first met at the little known University of St Andrews in Scotland (a small, insignificant country off the coast of England whose chief claim-to-fame is its cuisine traditionally deep-fried in North Sea oil¹). Soon the couple were sharing a house in order to make the most of their meagre student loans and eking out an impoverished life as they studied art history.

Keen to capitalise on their relationship and hopeful of becoming the kind of minor celebrities whose every movement and fashion faux pas is picked over by the tabloids and daytime television, William and Kate began to cultivate a lifestyle normally associated with the over-privileged and under-educated. They visited racecourses, hung out in nightclubs and took jobs as chalet maids at Klosters (a ski resort popular with eccentric biscuit manufacturers and the aristocracy) – but to no avail as their faces remained as unknown as the other members of David Cameron's shadow cabinet.

Digging themselves deeper in debt, the couple were forced to resort to more daring tactics to fund their dreams of fame, with William even going as far as to claim that he was somehow related to Britain's deeply-respected Royal Family.

Thinking that a nobler and heroic gesture would garner the recognition they craved, William joined the Household Cavalry’s Blues and Royals and began training for a tour of duty in Iraq . When this failed to excite either journalists or gossip columnists Kate, in desperation, complained to the Press Complaints Commission about the lack of media intrusion. The PCC, however, refused to instruct the newspapers to publish paparazzi photographs of her on a bus, walking down the street or, sensationally, holding a cup of coffee.

An emergency meeting of William’s family struck the fatal blow, when his grandfather, ‘Prince’ Philip (an old sea dog with a deep interest in world wildlife) urged William to do the decent thing. William, however, declined to dispatch Kate with a 12-bore or a white Fiat Panda and decided instead to break off his relationship citing the pressures of his military career and a woman he met in a Bournemouth nightclub.

After four failed years of striving for public recognition, the relationship will be buried on the front pages of the tabloids and the inside pages of the tabloids and the broadsheets for the next six months before being completely forgotten about when William manages to hook up with someone else.

¹ The As A Dodo editors wish to point out at this stage that the author of this obituary is of Scottish descent and that his embittered state is, apparently, the product of years spent as a youth believing that his country might actually fail to make fools of themselves in the World Cup. Happily, today this distressing delusional state is found only among English football fans.