Royal Engagement Portrait This photo showing up in your FB feed would send Wills and Kate straight to Grand Rapids

Further proof, if it were really needed, that the soon to be married royal couple are just like us. They’re reportedly insisting on living their lives without servants.

William’s father, Prince Charles, supposedly has the best part of 150 helpers. But Wills and Kate want to experience life’s highs and lows without people at their beck and call. Prince Charles’s staff (which number butlers, chauffeurs, valets and chefs) are paid a total of £6.3 million ($9.7 million), and journalist Jeremy Paxman famously made some pretty interesting claims about what occurs in a book he wrote about the royal family. To wit: Charles reportedly had four servants in attendance to help him get dressed, one aide squeezed his toothpaste and another once held a bottle while he produced a urine sample (these were all denied at the time by Clarence House). And, in fairness, these didn’t take place at the same time.

(See pictures of Prince William and Kate Middleton.)

No such alleged extravagance for his son and beloved Kate. One of those mysterious royal sources told the Daily Telegraph that, “It’s very much their instinct to manage on their own. They want to do their duty and make sure they are a real asset to the country, but they are private individuals who want to get on with their lives. He and Catherine live without domestic staff and they wouldn’t do it any other way. That’s the life they want to lead.”

(See pictures of royal weddings.)

As honorable as that all sounds, the couple must maintain bodyguards to keep a 24-hour watch of their cottage in Wales — we hope that’s no comment on crime rates there — but that, apparently, will be that. NewsFeed wishes them well, because once you’ve had your toothpaste squeezed, there tends to be no going back.