A Photographer Started a Snowball Fight Between Prince William and Princess Kate Once, Apparently

In 2016, Prince William and Princess Kate (then the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge) brought Prince George, then 2, and Princess Charlotte, then just a few months old, on a skiing trip to the French Alps.

Their goal while they were there was to get a few posed family photos for official use, as well as a few pictures of the royal couple skiing with their young kids.

Unfortunately, the day they were due to take those action shots, there was so much mist that it was impossible for PA photographer John Stillwell to fulfill his assignment.

"The skiing picture never happened, actually," the retired photographer revealed on Hello!'s A Right Royal Podcast.

"The idea was it would be a picture of the four of them skiing. Where it was up on the mountains, it's going to be misty, so I said, 'Well, if it is, we'll just do some pictures down here where they're staying.'

"Next morning it was misty, really badly, and I said, 'There's no point in going.' Sometimes you can go up and get above the clouds, but this day was impossible. It was very low cloud, and I couldn't see a thing, so we did it at the hotel.

"So I looked around and found at the back behind the hotel was a pretty quiet road full of snow, trees in the background, so I said, 'It's gotta be just Will and Kate, not the kids, the kids we can do on the balcony afterwards.'

"So we go around to the back there, and William sits and he's saying like, you know, 'What are you gonna do, it's supposed to be skiing?' and I said, 'Well, no one knows you can't ski today, we just do a picture and you've got your ski gear on, so OK fine.'"

At this point, Prince William didn't seem overly enthused with the idea, but he went along with the professional opinion anyway.

"He said, 'What do you want me to do?'" Stillwell recalled.

"I said, 'I'll have you walk just 30 yards away, then walk back towards me and I'll take some pictures. I'll do some full-length, some half-length, some headshots.'

"He said, 'Well, OK.' I don't think he was totally convinced, but it's the best I could do."

Then the photographer had a pretty bold idea for how to make the shoot more fun.

"He walked away and as Kate started to, I just tapped her on her shoulder and I said, 'Hey, when you get down there, make a snowball, have a snowball fight, but push it into his face,'" Stillwell said.

"She went, 'Pardon?' I said, 'Just whack him in the face with a snowball.' I didn't think she'd do it, but she did! He saw the funny side of it."

The podcast's co-host then said, "They're clearly a fun couple."

Stillwell answered, "Yeah, and I think they really think a lot of each other."

Cute, but more importantly, we got these very fun photos out of the whole thing.

This 2016 anecdote isn't the only time the now-Waleses have gotten themselves into a snowball fight.

Princess Kate was filmed throwing a snowball at her husband during a trip to Norway in 2018:

Also in 2018, Kensington Palace staff appeared to throw snowballs at the royal couple, which William promptly returned:

They're not like regular parents, they're cool parents.