How Prince William RIPPED UP THE ROYAL RULE BOOK

From fatherhood to millennial monarch, our future King will scale down pomp and pageantry, says Emily Andrews

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Right from the start of his royal life, Prince William made it clear he would do things his way. When he saw the proposed guest list for his and Catherine's wedding, including several hundred heads of state and foreign royalty, he went to his grandmother.

'I went to her [the Queen] and said, “Listen, I've got this list, not one person I know—what do I do?” and she went, “Get rid of it. Start from your friends and then we'll add those we need to in due course. It's your day.”'

That intervention was crucial — it meant that the couple could invite who they wanted (more than half of the 1,900 guests ended up being friends and family), and set the tone for both the wedding and their working life.

Whether it has been William's attempts to quietly modernise royal life, be a hands-on husband and father or play (and watch) football, the Prince of Wales has not let protocol or the ‘old’ way of doing things stand in his way.

Even his choice of girlfriend raised eyebrows with some fusty Palace staff, who viewed the middle-class Middletons as distinctly ‘infra dig’, and he ignored whispered snobbery from aristocratic friends about Carole Middleton's background as a flight attendant.

Certainly, after he and Kate got married in 2011, he ensured that they lived as normal a life as possible, with him having a ‘regular’ job, and by basing themselves on the remote island of Anglesey in north Wales.

There, it's my understanding that Kate continued to work from home for her family's business, while William was a Sea King search and rescue pilot at the RAF base.

She would do the supermarket shop herself at the local Waitrose or Morrisons, and the solitude enabled them to go out for dinner, enjoy walking their black cocker spaniel, Lupo, on the beach and have drinks at the local pub undisturbed.