'I've Got You': How Prince William's Secret Signal Helped 'Shaking' Kate Middleton Calm Her Nerves

Prince William was once "the world's most eligible bachelor" before the middle-class but sophisticated Kate Middleton caught his eye in the fall of 2001.

For one royal fan, it is easy to see why "so many people swooned over" the tall and "dashing" prince thanks to a brief moment in his engagement interview with his "shaking" future queen.

Kate's nerves seemed to get the better of her at one point, which led one fan to point out the princess-to-be's shaking.

"Catherine was shaking so bad they could not get a good photo of the ring so William held her hand," a royal fan wrote on X. Another stated, "It looked like he muttered to her 'I've got you' at one point. So romantic."

During the 2000s, William and Kate became popular figures in popular culture that decade — and this is without Kate so much as uttering a word to cameras or reporters. The duo underwent a brief breakup in early 2007 but were back together by the time the future queen attended the "Concert for Diana" event at Wembley Stadium that summer.

The pair married on April 29, 2011, nearly a decade after first meeting, in a lavish, pomp-filled ceremony at London's Westminster Abbey befitting a future king and queen.

Despite some mishaps in the early years of their marriage, namely, Kate's topless photo scandal, which RadarOnline.com reported on in 2012, the then-Duke and Duchess of Cambridge became beloved by many.

Although Willaim popped the question to an accepting Kate a few weeks before their November 16, 2010, engagement chat with ITV's Tom Bradby, the interview was watched by millions tuning in to see the beaming couple.

"[The couple’s] love story is really epic in its own way," William and Kate: A Royal Love Story author Christopher Andersen shared. "It really signifies the royal family’s leap from the 20th century into the new millennium."

"As I pointed out in my book, Kate is a transformative figure: a descendant of coal miners whose mother grew up in public housing and worked as a flight attendant before starting her own children’s party planning business at home," the biographer added during a December 2023 interview.

He concluded: "The press went crazy, just as it had when Charles started dating Diana. So many women have fallen victim to palace intrigue, and from the beginning, knives were out for Kate; many high-place aristocrats and their handlers did not want to see the future King of England involved in a serious romance with a middle-class commoner, no matter how intelligent, beautiful or capable she was."

Daily Mirror reported on the royal engagement interview.