The family of Thomas Kingston have called for a change in the way antidepressant medication is prescribed following the results of the inquest into Kingston’s suicide last February. The late husband of Prince and Princess Michael of Kent’s daughter Lady Gabriella Kingston died from a catastrophic head injury at his parents’ £3 million home in the Cotswolds, aged 45, with a gun found near his body.

During the inquest into his death, Katy Skerrett, the senior coroner for Gloucestershire, said Kingston had lunch with his parents before the couple went on a walk, and Kingston was not present upon their return. His body was discovered by his father in an outbuilding. At the time, those who knew Kingston were completely taken aback. One close friend told The Telegraph: “You do wonder how something like this happens. He was so fit and so mentally stable. He wasn’t a depressed individual.” Another friend added: “He’s one of those guys who can be quite enigmatic and doesn’t tell you what he is thinking.”.

It has now become clear that Kingston was struggling with depression and had recently stopped taking the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) he was prescribed as anti-depressants. Kingston’s parents, Martin and Jill Kingston, are now calling for a change in how patients are prescribed these SSRIs, with Martin Kingston telling Radio 4’s Today programme that patients should be told more explicitly about the potential side effects of the medication, including what can happen if they stop taking it.

To many, Kingston would not have been immediately obvious as a key player in the royal family. He married Lady Gabriella Windsor, the 43-year-old non-working royal 56th in line to the throne, and has stayed relatively removed from frontline royal life. But there is much more to Kingston than is widely known: the University of Bristol graduate had links to the royal family long before Lady Gabriella, having allegedly dated Pippa Middleton around the time of Kate and William’s wedding in 2011, as well as one of Prince William’s rumoured ex-girlfriends. And while he’s a financier by trade, Kingston also spent a period of time working in hostage negotiation and conflict resolution in Iraq during the war.

Here’s everything we know about the royal’s storied past. As with most people who come to marry royals, Kingston was well-acquainted with friends-of-friends of the family long before he actually married into The Firm. Born in Evesham, Worcestershire to William Martin Kingston and Jill Mary Kingston (née Bache), he wasn’t exactly British nobility. Bache is the granddaughter of Sir William Joseph Pearman-Smith of Park Hall, the former Mayor of Walsall, and Kingston is a “self made man” who was educated at a secondary-modern state school, before going on to become a successful barrister specialising in planning law. Kingston too was state educated, and his family is thought to be descendant from Cheshire butchers and farmers.

But it was in Gloucestershire where Kingston would find himself in the outer circle of the royals. At one point, he met fellow Bristol University graduate Natalie Hicks-Lobbecke and the pair are rumoured to have dated for a period of time. As it happens, Hicks-Lobbecke was also part of the Gloucestershire-based ‘Beaufort Polo Club set’ along with Prince William and Harry. She and William sparked dating rumours around July 2000, when Hicks-Lobbecke and the young Prince were photographed laughing with each other at a polo match, though both denied the relationship rumours at the time.

Then came Kingston’s second brush with near-royal romance in 2011, when he was said to be dating Pippa Middleton right around the time of Kate and William’s royal wedding. Far from the standard post-split animosity, he and Pippa have remained close friends. Both parties attended each others’ weddings — Kingston was at Middleton’s nuptials to James Matthews in 2017, and Middleton was in attendance at Kingston’s royal wedding to Lady Gabriella in 2019 — and have been photographed enjoying each others’ company many times over the years.

Kingston left Bristol University with a degree in economic history, which he put to good use in his some 17 years of work as a chartered financial analyst, equity analyst and director of the capital firms. However, he took an interesting segue after graduation, where he worked within the diplomatic missions unit of the Foreign Office in Iraq. In this role, Kingston was based in Baghdad, and gained experience in hostage negotiation and conflict resolution. According to The Times, he utilised his “relentless optimism” to help negotiate the release of hostages and adjudicate disputes between the Iraq’s warring ethnic, religious, and tribal leaders.

In 2004, he narrowly escaped a brush with death when a a suicide-bombing claimed the lives of 22 people at the only Anglican church in Iraq. Reverend Canon Andrew White, who was known as the “Vicar of Baghdad” thanks to his ten years presiding over the Anglican church in Iraq and also survived the bombing, said previously that Kingston was an “an exceptional young man” who “makes things happen.” Kingston’s pivot to this line of work makes more sense to those that knew him well, who described him as a “very, very, very” committed Christian. At uni, he was even known as “Christian Tom.”.