How some of our favorite royal romances started

The Prince and Princess of Wales were college sweethearts. The royal couple met as students at the University of St. Andrews. “We were friends for over a year first and it just sort of blossomed from then on,” Prince William said during their engagement interview. “We just spent more time with each other had a good giggle, had lots of fun and realized we shared the same interests and just had a really good time.”

In the same interview, the Prince admitted, “When I first met Kate I knew there was something very special about her. I knew there was possibly something that I wanted to explore there. But we ended up being friends for a while and that was a good foundation.”

Mary was unaware that Frederik was the Crown Prince of Denmark when they met in Australia during the 2000 Olympics. “Sometimes we hit the target without even aiming. That is how I think of our first meeting. A stroke of good luck that became a choice,” Mary said in 2018.

While it’s been reported that the royal couple met at the Slip Inn pub, Amber Petty, who was one of Mary’s bridesmaids, said on Sunrise , “I’m sorry to break everybody’s hearts, but it’s not always about randomly bumping into princes in pubs.”

“It wasn’t just a random meeting,” Amber added. “It was an organised small dinner during the Olympics and Mary happened to be invited and most of the guests happened to be royals.”

Alecko Papamarkou played matchmaker for the royal couple! Thanks to him, Crown Princess Marie-Chantal and Crown Prince Pavlos of Greece met at a 1992 birthday party in New Orleans.

“Alecko arranged to take me as his companion,” Marie-Chantal told Vanity Fair in 2008. “I didn’t want to go. I knew it was a big matchup, because Alecko had been telling me for weeks that he knew the perfect person for me. And I didn’t feel comfortable being set up. I tried to get out of it, but Alecko never returned my phone calls and we had arranged to meet at the airport. So I ended up going. I borrowed a navy-blue Chanel couture suit from my mother and looked like a million bucks.”

Pavlos revealed that Alecko managed to have them sit next to each other at dinner. “And we clicked. It was love at first sight. I knew that he was the person I would marry,” Marie-Chantal said.

Pavlos added, “I was completely taken. I’m not the kind of person who had girlfriends and then had little affairs on the side. I always had a girlfriend and moved on and went to another one. But the moment I saw Marie-Chantal, I said, Well, this is what I’ve been looking for. Alecko was right.”

It was also “love at first sight” for Princess Sofia and Prince Carl Philip. She and the Swedish royal met at a lunch through mutual friends. Carl Philip has gushed in the past that he of course fell for Sofia’s deep blue eyes. Speaking to Swedish channel TV 4, the Prince said (via HELLO! ), “I don’t think I knew the magic of love before I met Sofia,” adding, “But ever since I met her, I’ve seen how love can change a person.”

During a forum organized by the Crown Prince Foundation, Crown Prince Hussein of Jordan revealed that he met Princess Rajwa “through an old friend from school.” According to Vogue Arabia, he said: “I consider myself lucky because it is not every day you meet someone like Rajwa.”

In Netflix’s Harry & Meghan, the Duke of Sussex revealed that he and Meghan “met over Instagram.” He said in the docuseries, “I was scrolling through my feed and someone who was a friend had this video of the two of them, like a Snapchat.” The Prince recalled, “I was like, ‘Who is that?’” They ended up getting each other’s numbers and met when Meghan was in London for Wimbledon in 2016.

Queen Maxima and King Willem-Alexander, who wed in 2002, are said to have met in 1999 at the Seville Spring Fair in Spain. According to 9Honey , the Dutch royal introduced himself as only “Alexander.”

Claire met her Prince in 2001 at boarding school, the Collège Alpin Beau Soleil, in Switzerland. Ahead of their royal wedding, Félix told Wort.lu (via the Luxembourg Times ), “Over the years a close friendship developed, which stands at the beginning and is the foundation of our relationship.”