Prince William made "frantic" calls to then-Prince Charles and Queen Elizabeth II, declared he would sue, and told his lawyers to pursue serious damages after a French magazine published secretly captured topless photographs of Kate Middleton. That account comes from Russell Myers, royal editor of the Daily Mirror, in his new book "William and Catherine," set for U.S. publication on March 10.
The incident traces back to 2012, when William and Catherine took a mini-break at Château d'Autet, a 19th-century hunting lodge in the Luberon hills of Provence. A paparazzo stationed about a mile away photographed Catherine sunbathing without her knowledge. The French magazine Closer ran the images. Italian magazine Chi and the Irish version of the British Daily Star followed.
Myers writes that William had drawn a line long before the photos surfaced. In his telling, the future king walked into a pub where a group of national journalists were gathered the night before a royal engagement and delivered a message directly.
"We are not going to go down the same road."
The road he meant was the one his parents traveled, where the collapse of Charles and Diana's marriage played out in tabloid headlines on a near-daily basis. Myers told Fox News Digital that this experience shaped William's posture toward the press from the start.
The royal household moved fast, launching legal proceedings for breach of privacy against Closer's publisher. Aides described the publication as "grotesque and totally unjustifiable" and said the couple were "livid" and felt "violated." Palace staff compared the moment to "the dark days of Princess Diana being hounded to her death by the paparazzi," saying the clock had been turned back 15 years.
Closer stood their ground. The magazine issued a statement defending its editorial choice:
"The photographs we have selected are by no means degrading. They show a beautiful, in love, modern holidaying young couple in their normal life."
That argument did not hold up in court. In 2017, a judge in Nanterre ordered the French outlet to pay the couple €100,000 (roughly $117,892) in damages and fined two staffers a combined €90,000 (about $106,077). William and Catherine had sought approximately €1.5 million ($1.7 million), so the ruling fell well short of the amount requested. But the legal victory established the principle William was after.
Myers draws a direct line between the topless photos episode and William's broader approach to shielding his family from media intrusion. He told Fox News Digital that William's instinct to protect was visible even before the couple had children.
"It's very clear from what he said, 'I will stop at nothing to protect my family, and you have to realize this.' Even before he had children, William's real sense of urgency to try to make the media understand his views on that was very apparent."
According to Myers, Catherine handled the crisis with striking composure. A source close to the couple told Myers that Catherine was "incredibly calm and measured and seemingly in complete control," even though her life had been "firmly intruded upon by the press for years." She continued with royal duties, smiling and shaking hands while the legal battle churned behind the scenes. The couple was in the middle of a nine-day tour of Southeast Asia when the story broke.
Myers reveals that Catherine understood what she was signing up for long before she married William in 2011. The media's appetite for information about the next potential Princess of Wales was enormous. Myers described "intense pressure" as the relationship grew serious, with constant questions about who this new woman in William's life might become.
According to Myers, Catherine's approach was deliberate. He characterized her thinking at the beginning of the relationship this way: she felt that if she was going to put herself forward for something like this, she needed not only William's support but also the support of the institution. William, Myers writes, was "absolutely integral" to providing that support and ensuring the palace machinery backed her as well.
Myers doesn't shy away from comparing the treatment Catherine received to what Meghan Markle experienced. He acknowledged that Prince Harry "can rightly feel aggrieved" that differences existed in how the institution rallied around the two women.
"When you're looking at the heir and the spare, certainly there were differences afforded to Catherine that were not afforded to Meghan at the time."
That observation lands differently depending on where you sit. The institutional logic of monarchy is hierarchical by design. The heir commands more resources, more attention, and more protection than anyone else in the line. That isn't a flaw in the system. It is the system. Whether that system owes equal institutional support to every spouse who enters the family is a question the British public and the palace have clearly answered in different ways for different people.
What remains consistent in Myers's account is the central fact: William identified the media as a threat to his family early, drew boundaries others in his position had failed to draw, and enforced them through the courts when those boundaries were crossed. Princess Diana died in 1997 from injuries sustained in a Paris car crash. She was 36. Her eldest son decided he would not wait for tragedy to act.
The photographs from Provence are a footnote now. The posture William established is not.
