Royal Shenanigans
I have been trying my best to avoid the upcoming Royal Wedding media hype, but it’s next to impossible to do so. Although I don’t buy any newspapers nor watch television, my RSS feeds are full of mentions to Will’s & Kate getting married.
Personally I couldn’t care less, to me the Royal Family are nothing more than a vestigial remnant of an age long gone.
Now they no longer drain the coffers of the treasury, I don’t mind having them around to fill up the pages of The Daily Mail, I even understand that the Queen has been a valuable and stable head of state for decades, even being instrumental in smoothing over some difficulties within the political world, but lets face it, it’s just another wedding, something that happens on a daily basis, although not as lavish perhaps.
As I’m a child of the seventies, I remember Charles and Diana getting married, the huge media event it turned out to be will forever be etched upon everyones minds who were alive at the time. I think it’s comparable to events such as JFK being shot, Neil Armstrong setting foot on the moon or 9/11, we all know where we were at those times and what we were doing.
Charles and Diana were possibly an exception as this was the first worldwide televised Royal wedding, People were very patriotic back in those days, so everyone was interested.
There were street parties, the local community all rallied to throw something together, we had tables on our street laden with food and drink, flags and bunting everywhere. I wont even mention the shitty Royal memorabilia that was handed out.
But as history has unfolded in front of our eyes, we now know that even fairytale weddings for princesses eventually turn sour and end in tears.
Will William and Kate’s wedding be as much a spectacle? I don’t think so. The media will try its best to make it so, but even with the weekend being declared a holiday, I honestly think that people no longer care enough about the Royal family to give a damn. I simply cannot believe that communities in Britain will come together to celebrate the event. Most people don’t even know or talk to their neighbours nowadays.
It’s a sadness to say that British people are no longer patriotic about their country, sure we support our sporting teams and our soldiers abroad, but the whole nation is fragmented, not because the immigration of a vast amount of other nationalities has watered down the numbers, but because we have become disillusioned with our country and identity.
The Royal family used to represent all that was great about Great Britain, now they are just a rich family that live in London.
I feel that the constant media attention on their lives has shown us that they are human, they have their frailties and they make mistakes like the rest of us. They are no longer icons to look up to and revere. You cannot imagine Elizabeth the First or Henry the Eighth having fallible personalities, I’m sure they had their problems but they never had cameras shoved in their faces each time they farted.
I wish the happy couple well in their marriage, we might even get to see a Queen Kate in years to come, which in itself sounds rather ridiculous, but in twenty years time when someone asks, ‘Where were you when William and Kate got married?’ will we even remember?
