They left the church arm in arm, their smiles radiating affection and warmth – the bride in a fine Italian couture dress that accentuated her slender figure, and the handsome groom flashing that dazzling grin that made him ” Debs enjoyment”.
As they stood on the steps of St George's Chapel, greeting a crowd of cheering well-wishers and on the threshold of a life together, Lady Gabriella Windsor and her new husband Thomas Kingston appeared blissfully happy.
“She was very pretty and he looked proud,” one guest recalls. “They had this steady look of supreme contentment.” My wife whispered to me, “This is a couple that will never part.”
No one could have imagined that twelve weeks before their fifth wedding anniversary, Tom would take a shotgun from the family and walk away from their side forever.
Yesterday an inquest heard that the 45-year-old son-in-law of the Prince and Princess Michael of Kent was found dead by the gun with a catastrophic head wound in an outbuilding in the grounds of his parents' £3million mansion in Kemble, Gloucestershire.
Lady Gabriella Windsor and her new husband Thomas Kingston appeared blissfully happy on their wedding day in May 2019
Details of the final hours leading up to this devastating tragedy last Sunday were sketchy and almost mundane. He had lunch with his parents Martin and Jill at the family home, a 15-minute drive from King Charles' rural retreat of Highgrove House.
After lunch, Tom's lawyer father had gone for a walk with the family dogs. When he returned to the house where the couple had lived since 1996, his son was no longer there.
About thirty minutes passed and his mother went looking for him. Shortly afterwards, unable to answer, her husband forced open the locked door of an outbuilding.
Inside he found her son with a fatal injury.
No other parties were believed to be involved. Gloucestershire Police previously said officers were called to the scene by an ambulance team just before 6.30pm. According to an autopsy, the cause of death was confirmed to be a traumatic wound to the head.
Katy Skerrett, Gloucester's chief coroner, opened the inquest, which lasted barely five minutes, and limited her remarks to a brief overview of the incident. “Mr. Kingston,” she said, “was visiting his parents' house in the Cotswolds.” His father was walking the dogs.
Lady Gabriella Windsor with husband Tom Kingston two months after their wedding in 2019
“When he returned, Mr. Kingston was not in the house. His father forced his way into a locked outbuilding when there was no response. He found Mr Kingston deceased with a catastrophic head injury. There was a weapon at the crime scene. The emergency services were called. “Police believe the death is not suspicious.”
What exactly drove this seemingly happy man to an act of desperation in the prime of his life with a woman who adored him is now the subject of intensive investigation.
On the outside, Tom Kingston seemed to have it all. Marriage to one of the “nicest” members of the royal family, a large circle of friends and a thriving financial investment business. He was a man whose promising life had been marked by carefree cheerfulness and reassuring convention since childhood. And someone who, according to acquaintances, was looking for nothing more than comfortable domestic fulfillment.
Although they had no children, married life clearly suited him. He had mastered the fishbowl existence that permeates all royal marriages, no matter how far from the throne they were. And he had done it brilliantly.
Lady Gabriella – Ella to her family and friends – may not be in line to the throne, but as the daughter of the colorful Princess Michael, she has often been the focus of unwanted attention. To her credit, she always solved the problem with a relaxed smile.
The couple did not lead an extravagant life and were not targeted by the paparazzi.
In many ways, their no-fuss approach – their home is a modest apartment in trendy Notting Hill, which they recently put on the market until they move somewhere bigger – would serve as a valuable life lesson for some of Ella's royal cousins .
It secured them a place at the top royal table – they were guests of the King and Queen at their Ascot house party last summer and countless other high-profile gatherings.
In fact, it was significant that the King paused his cancer treatment, not only to pay touching tribute to Tom's death, but also to direct the Buckingham Palace staff to support not only Prince and Princess Michael, but also the stricken Kingston family. This was unusual as the Kents are not working royals. But it also reflects the popularity of Ella and Tom.
His death has stunned a royal family already suffering from a host of domestic problems, including the illnesses of Charles and the Princess of Wales, and affected their ability to carry out their normal functions.
Ella loved being married and “Mrs. Kingston,” although she technically still has her title and is officially called Lady Gabriella Kingston.
Tom laughs with Queen Camilla at Royal Ascot last summer
On weekends, the couple could often be seen at the Notting Hill Farmers' Market and strolling hand in hand through the trendy shops along Holland Park Avenue.
When Tom and Ella got engaged, old friends of the Bristol University business graduate joked that he would be pushing himself beyond his limits by marrying into Princess Pushy's posh circle.
He would repeat with equal good humor that she was the lucky one to join the Kingston clan.
Both of course had a “past”, but nothing too controversial – although Ella came into the spotlight when an ex-boyfriend wrote an indiscreet article about her mother, the royals and racism.
The truth is that Tom, who spent several dangerous years working on hostage negotiations in war-torn Iraq, had a series of beautiful girlfriends before he met Ella. He was one of those good-looking characters about whom friends liked to tell tall tales about romantic adventures.
But they weren't all big. Women were attracted to his lazy confidence, while men envied his effortless success with the opposite sex.
In fact, he has attracted some of the prettiest young women around the Prince William and Prince Harry sets.
Among them were Pippa Middleton, the Princess of Wales' sister who is now married to hedge fund manager James Matthews – although he denied they were romantically linked – financier Louisa Strutt and Natalie Hicks-Lobbecke, an old flame of Prince William, whom Tom dated during his time in Iraq.
He and “Nats” met when they were both at Bristol University.
As a close friend said admiringly, “Tom's great achievement is that none of his old girlfriends have anything but nice things to say about him. 'Even when it's all over, they still like him.'
On the occasion of his wedding, one of Tom's friends told me, “He's exactly the kind of guy you'd want to introduce to your mother.”
But there was another side to the Gatsby-esque character who kept appearing at social weddings on the arm of a pretty girl. He had a deep and abiding Christian faith. And it was this spiritual element that armed him during the three years he spent in Baghdad at the height of postwar violence.
He worked there alongside Canon Andrew White, the so-called Anglican curate of Baghdad, who described him as a “fearless” and “extraordinary young man” and whom Tom affectionately called “Abouna,” Arabic for priest.
The two had numerous brushes with death, most notably when a suicide bomber struck White's church in 2004, leaving 22 people dead.
“Tom was with me in Iraq during the most dangerous days of the war,” White said this week.
“One of the first things I taught him was, 'Remember, we don't pay attention, we take risks.' The next thing you need to remember is that in our peacemaking, we don't make peace with the good guys “But only with the really bad ones.” Tom learned that very quickly and he did the same with me.
“One day he came back from a meeting with a group of ayatollahs that I had sent him to and said, 'That's not good, Abouna, they were all good guys.'” He certainly got the message that you can only go with can make peace with the wicked.”
Memories of those days came back to Canon White when he was among the guests at Tom and Ella's wedding. There he was able to talk to his protégé's new father-in-law, Prince Michael, about a mission the two of them had completed for him in Israel, long before Ella was a twinkle in Tom's eye.
The prince, whose family came from Greece, had a relative buried near the Mount of Olives, but did not know where. The priest and his assistant not only found the unkempt grave, but also cleaned it up.
Meanwhile, back in the UK, Tom entered the world of finance, initially at Schroders, the high-profile asset management firm, and in 2017 moved to Devonport Capital as one of two directors. Devonport offers short-term loans to companies operating in developing countries and has offices in St James's, just a stone's throw from Clarence House.
His wedding anniversary at St. George's Chapel was a major social occasion. The Queen and Prince Philip led the guests.
It had been almost a year to the day since Prince Harry married Meghan Markle at the same location, but that and the sunshine were all they had in common.
“She was such a sweet bride who fussed over the bridesmaids and page boys, and he was so attentive too,” one guest recalls. “Of course it helped that they both had big smiles on their faces.”
From the chapel, buses took guests to the reception at Frogmore House, where the couple posed for their wedding photos.
In the bleak months ahead, they will forever remain a reminder of this happiest of days.
Additional reporting: Simon Trump