DAVID CAMERON and his cabinet cheered to the echo and gleefully banged the Downing Street table when they were told. Understandable joy at the happy couple’s news, a natural Tory royalist exuberance infecting even the sometimes mildly republican LibDems. But there was also certainly a sense that the engagement of Prince William of Wales to Catherine “Kate” Elizabeth Middleton would produce a nice political dividend, a filip to national morale at a time of remorselessly grim news, an upward blip on the PM’s new National Happiness Index. Good news for the couple, the coalition government, and the House of Windsor.
There’s nothing the English – and, secretly, many of us – like better than a royal wedding. The joining of the dashing second in line to the throne to a presentable commoner promises months of reality-TV-like drama culminating in an orgy of pomp. A TV audience of over a billion, one in seven of the world’s population, is expected for the happy day. Street parties throughout Britain are planned.
The Daily Telegraphpatronisingly writes that "Ms Middleton, who has shown herself to be a perfectly normal, attractive, intelligent, and sensitive woman, is precisely what the Royal family needs". The wedding, it says with evident relief but probably some over-confidence, "should secure the future of the dynasty, and bolsters the notion of a constitutional monarchy".
Other European royal houses have also recently broken out of the gene pool, or are about to, to embrace commoners in matrimony – in June, Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden married her trainer Daniel Westling, next summer Prince Albert of Monaco will wed Charlene Wittstock, a professional swimmer, while in Denmark and the Netherlands love has also prevailed over bloodlines. All very democratic, and the public in most cases seems to have approved of this appearance of a common touch.
One of Britain’s great constitutionalists once warned that “too much daylight” could well imperil the myth of the monarchy. The ascent of a commoner to the throne may well begin to demystify the institution, and most crucially, undermine the very justification for hereditary succession. After all, unless the royal line is something special, apart from and above the lives of ordinary mortals, it loses its raison d’être and mystique. The case for meritocracy and democracy becomes unanswerable, a reality that one day King William may have to face.