A group of fans’ reactions to meeting a teenage Prince William in footage captured on a royal tour in 1998 has gone viral, after resurfacing on social media.
William was regarded as one of the world’s most popular young public figures in his teenage years, and fans would turn out at the prince’s events throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s hoping to meet and greet him.
Uploaded to TikTok by user the.royal.watcher on July 10, footage of William meeting crowds, which included a group of girls holding flowers and banners, has been viewed over 170,000 times in less than 24 hours.
Tim Graham Photo Library via Getty Images/Tim Graham Photo Library via Getty Images
The footage was shot when the prince was 15 years old in 1998, during a visit to Canada with his father, the then Prince Charles (now King Charles III) and his younger brother, Prince Harry.
The visit was made at a poignant point in the lives of William and Harry, just six months after the tragic death of their mother, Princess Diana. William had just turned 15, and Harry was 12, in August 1997 when Diana sustained fatal injuries in a Paris car crash while being closely pursued by members of the paparazzi.
William and Harry joined their father in Vancouver, Canada where he undertook a round of public engagements before taking his sons on a private skiing holiday in the area’s famous winter sports resorts.
Shown in the viral video, hundreds of fans flocked to see the princes during the official part of their visit, with a number holding signs, one notably reading “William, it’s me you’ve been looking for.”
The video has been widely shared and received in excess of 7,000 likes and numerous comments, many of which concerned the prince’s popularity in his younger days.
“He was so cute, I was so in love back then,” wrote one TikTok user. With a further comment reading: “He really resembles Princess Diana.”
The attention lavished on William in his youth was jokingly addressed during his engagement interview with Kate Middleton in December 2010, when the prince suggested that his future wife may have had a poster of him on her bedroom wall growing up.
“There’s a story that goes around that you had a picture of him on your wall,” ITV interviewer Tom Bradby asked the future princess, to which William responded: “There wasn’t just one, there was about 20!”
“He wishes! No,” Kate responded. “No, I had the Levis guy on my wall—not a picture of William, sorry.”
William then closed the segment by suggesting “it was me in Levis really.”
In April 2023, William and Kate celebrated their 12th wedding anniversary, and in the years since their marriage they have welcomed three children into their family; Prince George, born in 2013; Princess Charlotte, born in 2015; and Prince Louis, born in 2018.
Newsweek approached Kensington Palace via email for comment.
James Crawford-Smith is Newsweek‘s royal reporter based in London. You can find him on Twitter at @jrcrawfordsmith and read his stories on Newsweek‘s The Royals Facebook page.
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