William and Kate’s Generation Game: One’s middle-class, the other’s blue-blooded. How do the Middleton and Windsor family trees compare?

By Claudia Joseph for MailOnline
Updated: 05:14 EDT, 18 April 2011

It is traditionally the first question you are asked by the ushers when you arrive at a wedding ceremony: ‘Bride or Groom?’

But when William and Kate marry at Westminster Abbey in less than two weeks, the question will be mere formality as the contrast between the couple’s guests could not be starker. For Kate is the first ‘commoner’ to marry a future King for 350 years – since James II scandalised the court by marrying his mistress Anne Hyde – and her family and friends will stand out among the landed gentry and coronets.

While her family is descended from miners and mill owners, William can trace his family history back to Queen Victoria and centuries beyond. Now, in conjunction with a new television documentary, Meet The Middletons, The Mail on Sunday has charted the tale of two extraordinary families, whose union will produce our future Monarch.

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MOTHER AND BABY

Prince William arrived in the world at St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington, West London, on June 21, 1982 – courtesy of the Queen’s own surgeon-gynaecologist, Sir George Pinker. Naturally, William’s first photoshoot was a high-profile affair – taken at Kensington Palace by Lord Snowdon.

Born to marry: William and Diana in the Snowdon portrait (left) and Kate with her mother Carole

Kate was born five months earlier than her future husband on January 9, 1982 at the Royal Berkshire Hospital, Reading.

The first photograph of the future Princess shows the baby Kate – and her mop of dark hair – cradled in the arms of her mother Carole. It was taken on January 24, 1982, in the bedroom of her parents’ semi-detached home in Bradfield Southend, Berkshire. She was just 15 days old.

THE FAMILY CHRISTENING

The christening of William Arthur Philip Louis took place on August 4 – the Queen Mother’s Birthday – in 1982.

He was baptised in the Music Room at Buckingham Palace by the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Robert Runcie, in a Honiton lace christening gown made for Queen Victoria’s eldest daughter, Princess Victoria, and passed down through the family.

The gown jewels: William in lace at Buckingham Palace and Kate's baptism at a local church

What a contrast to the christening of Catherine Elizabeth Middleton on June 20, 1982 – the day before her future husband was born – at her local church, St Andrew’s, in Bradfield on the banks of the River Pang, Berkshire.

Her father Michael sported a traditional dark suit with striped tie for the occasion and is seen here posing proudly with Kate and her mother Carole, who wore a Laura Ashley dress for the down-to-earth family event.

COUPLE'S ANCESTORS WHO COULD HAVE BEEN TWINS

GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GRANDPARENTS

Kate may not be blue-blooded like William, but her paternal great-great-great-grandfather Frank Lupton could be the twin of William’s ancestor Edward VII, pictured with his fiancee, the future Queen Alexandra, in 1862.

Blue blood: The Prince of Wales, who was to become Edward VII in 1901 after the long reign of his mother Queen Victoria, with Princess Alexandra

For mill owner Lupton, a father of five, who lived in a sprawling Victorian mansion on the outskirts of Leeds, is the spitting image of his Royal sovereign. He set up the family trust which sent Kate to public school Marlborough College. He died of heart disease 22 years later, leaving a staggering £64,500 in his will – the equivalent of £32.6 million today.

Miner details: Jane Liddle, a miner's wife, and Frank Lupton who amassed a fortune

However, Kate’s maternal great-great-great-grandmother Jane Liddle was less fortunate. Married to a miner, the mother of ten lived in comparative poverty in the North East.

PARASOL AND PLUS FOURS OR A POSE FROM THE PITS

GREAT-GREAT-GRANDPARENTS

William’s ancestors George V and Queen Mary, seen here posing at Balmoral, could not look more different from Kate Middleton’s great-great-grandparents, miner John Harrison and his wife Jane, pictured in the garden of their modest home in the pit village of Hetton-Le- Hole in Tyne and Wear in the 1950s.

Just dandy or just modest: George V and Queen Mary, left, and John and Jane Harrison

Sporting a peaked cap and plus fours, with Queen Mary at his side shielding her face from the sun with a hat and parasol, Wills’ great-great-grandfather looks positively flamboyant compared with the dour working-class respectability of Kate’s ancestors.

Sadly, John’s career in the mines was cut tragically short when he was trampled by a runaway pony pulling a coal truck. After lying flat on his back for months, he was forced to give up work, spending the remainder of his life in considerable pain, supported by walking sticks.

A KING'S FORTUNE AND A HUMBLE SHILLING MAN

GREAT-GRANDPARENTS

While the Duke of York served in the Royal Navy during the First World War and was mentioned in dispatches, Kate’s great-grandfather, Charlie Goldsmith, was one of Field Marshal Kitchener’s ‘Shilling Men’ – so-called owing to their wage of a shilling a day – and served in the Royal Fusiliers.

George, Duke of York and Kate's great-grandfather Charlie Goldsmith (right) both served in the Great War

William’s great-grandfather went on to become George VI on the abdication of his brother Edward VIII in 1936. He and the Queen Mother refused to leave Buckingham Palace during the Second World War. When they were bombed, she declared: ‘We can now look the West End in the face.’

This photograph of William’s great-grandmother with a Sealyham Terrier was taken in Windsor in 1950, just two years before the death of King George VI.

Proud: The Queen Mother, pictured in 1950 and Edith Goldsmith with her dog Bonnie, taken in about 1956

By then Kate’s great-grandmother Edith Goldsmith, a mother of six, had been widowed for 12 years after Kate’s great-grandfather died of asthma and acute bronchitis.

His death left his wife Edith to bring up their youngest children in a condemned flat in Southall, West London.

FORMAL OR FLARES, THE GRANDPARENTS ALL LOVE TO DANCE

GRANDPARENTS

The expression on all their faces looks identical – obviously the Queen and Prince Philip enjoy a dance as much as Ronald and Dorothy Goldsmith, mother and father of Carole Middleton.

But while William’s grandparents dressed in black tie for the 1947 Youth Service Ball in Edinburgh, Kate’s grandfather let his hair down in a trendy velvet smoking jacket and flares at a social event in Southall, West London, in the Seventies.

Cutting a dash: The Queen and Prince Philip at a dance in Edinburgh in 1947, and Dorothy and Ronald Goldsmith

Dorothy was known as a good dancer who liked to party, but her key to a prosperous life was hard work – a quality she instilled in her children. Nicknamed ‘Lady Dorothy’ by her husband’s family, because of her airs and graces, she encouraged Ronald to take advantage of the property boom and create a better future for their children.

Dorothy died in 2006, three years after her husband.

*Meet The Middletons, Channel 4, 9pm, tomorrow