Paul Holmes: It's fairy tale time again

I loved it. I couldn't have been happier the other morning when I read of the engagement of William and Kate. She is beautiful. She has extraordinary style. She is the perfect woman to marry the man who will one day be the King of England.

In that blue dress she wore to that wedding on their way back from Kenya the other week, she looked like she had everything. And she did, of course, as we now know. She had the only man she's ever wanted; the man she waited for, the man - and the job - she had the daring to set her heart on such a long time ago.

She will be Queen Catherine, we are told. Or Queen Kate. Both names are perfect. They are old names and old royal. Queen Kate sounds quite Tudor, very Hampton Court.

Good and robust and English. Mind you, if the present Queen lasts another 20 years as she well might and Charles lasts another 40 years she may never be Queen anything.

But what is it about William and Kate? Why do we care? He's just another prince and she is a rich, ambitious girl who doesn't seem to have had to work too hard in her life. She's bright, though. A levels.

Poor Di failed her O levels twice. Amazing though, wasn't it. She failed her O levels twice and went on to become the most loved, most beautiful, most admired and most celebrated woman of the 20th century.

I'd almost forgotten how beautiful she was, Diana, until I saw that photograph published this week by the New Zealand Herald. I couldn't take my eyes off her face or off the memories.

What a pity the fairy tale didn't work. It turned out poor Charles was in love with someone else; a married woman and entirely too racy. So they found him a shy virgin, Diana Spencer, who ticked all the right boxes.

But Charles and Diana had been brought up in the modern world and the old Royal family came a big gutser imposing medieval expectations upon them. Remember the Tony Blair character in The Queen putting the phone down in despair at the Royal family - oblivious to the worst crisis it was facing since the Abdication of 1936 - saying: "Who are these people?"

But what is it about William and Kate? Why does their story this week move the whole world so?

Because kingship is one of the most ancient aspects of organised human society. We cannot let it go. It's a good thing because those who attain it are born to it and the rest of us know there's no point fighting for it.

It is completely random. God makes kings or the randomness of the universe does it. Something totally out of human control makes kings. We quite like that.

There is nothing as magical as kingship. Kingship is eternally as magical as white candles on a frosted night. Or a summer's night, if that's what you like.

And we admire Kate. She has been in public life now, on full international display, for nearly a decade and she's never put a foot wrong. She's had time to do so and she hasn't. Ever.

And, in that time, she's been able to serve something of an apprenticeship. I wonder if William understood that. I think he may have, instinctively.

He saw his mother hunted and hounded mercilessly and relentlessly, photographers snapping even her last gasps as she lay crumpled in the car in Paris.

And this is the other sweet and lovely part of the Wills and Kate story. You know Diana would have approved of her. Diana would have admired her strength and resilience and her patience.

As for William, he's Diana's boy. And he's happy. That's the thing.

The final touch - and say what you like about the British Royal family but they have an eye for the flourish - was Kate emerging this week wearing Diana's engagement ring. What a touch. My God, we haven't seen that ring for a very long time. And when we saw it first 30 years ago, we thought it divine.

And there it is again. On Kate's finger, stunning, beautiful Kate.

We loved the way the young man said that Kate having the ring was his way of including his mother in their happiness. The ring came out of the blue. The ring is perfect.

And we can be sure that they're happy. They've neither gone far away from each other in all the years. At least we can be sure this time that they know each other. We found out when Charles and Diana went to pot that when they married they hardly knew each other.

This is a real relationship. We know enough to know this. His isn't some mad fairytale insisted on by the old Queen Mother.

And as someone wrote this week, the Royal family has moved with the times. There is no way they want to go through the horrors of an arranged marriage that tore at the very fabric of their establishment when Diana and Charles fell so horribly, and painfully, apart.

I don't think we'll see Kate sitting alone by the pond at the Taj Mahal. Yes, it's great news. There's nothing like a beautiful couple engaged and there's nothing to beat a beautiful Royal couple engaged.

And next; a treat. A British Royal wedding in the London summer between a couple you know can handle it.

Poor Kate. You can see it already.

Despite her long association with the Prince, you know her life has changed amazingly, and forever, overnight.