Strange Details About Kate Middleton's Parents

On paper, Catherine, Princess of Wales' parents, Carole and Michael Middleton, seem like fairly regular people. In fact, some may even argue that their background was far too regular to be affiliated with the royal family. According to Vanity Fair, the British media rather rudely dubbed them "the middle-class Middletons" because of just how normal their lives were. Unfortunately, the Middleton family reportedly endured similar jabs from William, Prince of Wales' nearest and dearest too. 

During a 2022 appearance on Vanity Fair's "Dynasty" podcast, royal expert Katie Nicholl disclosed that Prince William's friends had nicknamed Kate Middleton "doors to manual" during the early days of their relationship. Nicholl explained that the moniker was a derogatory reference to Carole's former job as a British Airways air hostess. If that wasn't scathing enough, his inner circle also labeled her "'Kate Middle-Class." Additionally, the royal family supposedly took issue with the Middleton family's commoner status too. 

When Kate and William briefly split up in 2007, an insider shared their issues with Carole with The Mirror: "She is pushy, rather twee and incredibly middle-class. She uses words such as 'Pleased to meet you,' 'toilet,' and 'pardon.'" Another source claimed that Kate initially took such remarks in good fun but they eventually made her feel like she would always be an outsider. Although Carole and Michael obviously didn't boast the kind of wealth that the royal family and their inner circle were blessed with, they weren't exactly middle class either, with a reported multi-million-pound net worth.

According to The Sun, Carole and Michael Middleton's net worth exceeded £54 million (around $70 million) in 2024. As a result, it's unsurprising that Kate Middleton was living a lavish life before she married Prince William. Alongside attending an expensive boarding school, the three Middleton children also enjoyed the comforts of a luxurious 5-bedroom home. And after Catherine, Princess of Wales, married William, Prince of Wales, Carole and Michael moved into a sprawling 7-bedroom home known as Bucklebury Manor. Needless to say, the criticism of their lack of wealth was entirely unwarranted. 

A 2014 Daily Mail report noted that the Middleton family fortune actually came from Kate's paternal great-great-great-grandfather Frank Lupton, who took the family firm William Lupton and Co. to new heights with his textile manufacturing ideas. Lupton left his family with a whopping £5.7 million, which passed through the various generations. Michael also procured additional wealth through a trust fund set up by Kate's great-grandmother, Olive. The princess' parents then used their entrepreneurial skills to build considerably on what they already had. 

As Carole recalled to the Daily Mail in 2021, she couldn't find any unique plates for Kate's fifth birthday party. As a result, "I realized there was a gap in the market for party ware that wasn't too expensive and which looked good, so decided to design my own." And after many trials and tribulations, her company Party Pieces was born in 1987. Although it thrived for several years, things started to go downhill during the 2020 pandemic.

In June 2023, Tatler confirmed that Carole and Michael Middleton's Party Pieces had become insolvent after incurring more than £2.5 million in debt. A month prior, several reports suggested that Carole had sold the business to James Sinclair's Teddy Tastic. During an October 2023 chat with The Telegraph he suggested that Carole had sold her 49% stake in the company in April because she wanted to enjoy a quieter life as a grandmother. 

The entrepreneur also revealed that the business was thriving at the time and raking in a handsome profit of about a million pounds. According to Sinclair, the investors who took the reins were to blame for its downfall. Meanwhile, royal biographer Christopher Andersen pointed out to Us Weekly that the COVID-19 pandemic had gravely impacted Party Pieces because people understandably weren't keen on having parties for children at the time. 

The author stressed that the Middletons' business failure wasn't indicative of their personal finances, which remained in good shape. Andersen also clarified, "No one in the royal family is embarrassed by the failure of Party Pieces." He continued, "Between the king's cancer battle and Kate's cancer battle, the last thing they have on their minds is how much the Middletons owe their creditors." It's still suspicious that The Firm didn't put their reported $28 billion net worth to good use to help the princess' parents in their time of need.

Kate Middleton's parents were once the victims of a smear campaign. As the Daily Mail reported at the time, after Carole and Michael Middleton's Party Pieces failed, someone put up derogatory posters around their home village of Bucklebury to shame the couple publicly. The posters called the Middletons out for failing to pay back the millions of pounds they owed their creditors. The person behind the campaign seemed particularly irritated by the fact that Party Pieces couldn't pay their taxes or the government loan they had incurred since they wrote, "Yes, folk's [sic] that's taxpayer money. Petition the insolvency service." 

They added, "The future king's in-laws are screwing its creditors, shameful!" To make matters worse, the posters were plastered around busy areas of the village to ensure that they would get as many eyeballs on them as possible. Local sources divulged to The Sun that Bucklebury's citizens were displeased by the campaign because they were so fond of the Middletons, with one asserting, "They are doing their best to make things right and don't deserve this kind of abuse."

Some people even spotted Kate's younger brother, James Middleton, taking matters into his own hands by removing the posters himself. Unfortunately for the Middletons, that wasn't the only time their reputation took a hit. The sixth season of the popular Netflix show, "The Crown," made Carole out to be a scheming social climber who orchestrated Kate's relationship with Prince William. The unflattering portrayal became a tragic detail of Carole's life and sparked tons of backlash from royal watchers.

Carole Middleton reportedly played a larger part in Kate Middleton and Prince William's romance than we knew. In Omid Scobie's tell-all 2023 book "Endgame" he penned that Carole had recognized her daughter's potential to excel in life early on, so she took steps to set her up for success. According to Scobie, Kate initially sought to enroll in the University of Edinburgh. However, her mother convinced her to change her plans so she could be at St. Andrews at the same time as William, Prince of Wales. While that may make it seem like Carole's role in the romance was largely coincidental, others believe she may have helped it along in more ways than one. 

While speaking to Fox News Digital in 2023, fellow royal biographer Christopher Andersen posited that William and Kate's paths may never have crossed if Carole hadn't actively set things in motion, especially considering she always wanted her children to climb the social ladder. Meanwhile, royal expert Shannon Felton Spence elaborated on the same sentiment by proclaiming, "Her mother did intentionally move her family up in the social strata by making sure her children excelled and were at the right schools and activities." 

She continued, "Carole sent her kids to the right schools, put them in the right sports, brought them the right clothes." Spence even professed that Carole had essentially put her children in the path of the tight-knit elite circles of British society by making all the right choices along the way. Given all this, it's unsurprising that Carole was once dubbed the British Kris Jenner.

Carole and Michael Middleton's relationship with their only son, James Middleton, has been full of ups and downs. In his memoir, "Meet Ella: The Dog Who Saved My Life," James wrote about how his parents had enrolled him in Marlborough College, a private boarding school that cost £32,000 a year. However, James never excelled academically and wound up having to take a gap year to retake his A-Level Chemistry exam four times. Although Carole and Michael lived a lavish life because of their personal fortune, they still couldn't justify their pricey investment in their son. 

As James tells it, his father labeled his education expenses a "waste of money." Elsewhere in his memoir, the Middleton clan's youngest child detailed how Michael and Carole weren't exactly supportive when he was dealing with mental health issues either, sadly recalling, "Mum and Dad found it difficult to talk to me about my mental health, because they felt they knew me better than I did." In fact, his parents weren't in favor of him going to therapy or taking prescription drugs because they feared he wouldn't be able to live without them. 

James had no intention of using mood-altering medication anyway, so he really didn't appreciate his parents' judgmental interjections. The entrepreneur also noted, "They were uncomfortable with the fact that I'd been labelled 'clinically depressed.'" Although James could empathize with the fact that they came from a generation where honest discussions about mental health weren't encouraged, their lack of support hurt him nonetheless.