A fairy-tale wedding? Really?

THE EDITOR: Monarchy-related news does not normally fit into my top reading list, but the air of importance, fanfare and hype attached to today’s wedding of Britain’s Prince Harry and American actress Meghan Markle beckoned comment.

In 2011, when Prince William wed Kate Middleton, media coverage was said to have reached two billion people in more than 180 countries. That figure bettered the 750 million viewers of Prince Charles and Diana’s 1981 wedding by a landslide. Prince Harry and Meghan’s marriage would surely reconfigure the record books for television viewership.

But apart from record breaking viewers, I wonder what was fairy tale about this marriage tale.

To begin with, I can’t seem to reconcile the hype of a West Indian society seeking to glamorise and romanticise a royal wedding mere weeks after a controversial and seemingly xenophobic gaffe which placed the Windrush generation of Commonwealth citizens with a threat of deportation despite being residents of the UK for decades. This was a blunder that eventually saw Theresa May apologising to the heads of 12 Caribbean countries.

Sure the prince and the sparkling Markle make a charming couple, but what’s fairy tale about a society which was forced to unglue itself from its suffocating past into accepting a wedding of the prince to a divorced biracial woman? I wondered what was fairy tale about the royal wedding when the very monarchy had peculiar rules as far as a marriage of a divorced person was concerned.

In 2002, the policy on divorce and remarriage was subject to review. The General Synod stated then that “the church accepts that, in exceptional circumstances, a divorced person may marry again in church during the lifetime of a former spouse.” What’s fairy tale then about “royals” who can only be allowed to marry divorcees through special dispensation? That probably is more outdated and obsolete than arranged marriages that still exist in parts of our civilised world. But I guess that at very least, if this wedding is not defined as fairy tale, it surely ranks as highly exceptional.

More importantly, I wonder what’s fairy tale about the very monarchy itself. At its very best, the glitter of the monarchy provides a charming and knightly perspective of a life in which the kingdom’s subjects glorify a king and queen. But for me, the concept of a monarchy remains the most patent example of that which is anachronistic, archaic and outmoded and which should reside in the pages of a dusty history book shelved in an old wooden museum.

Any modern and progressive thinker should smile at monarchist susceptibilities and hail self-governing and autonomous constitutions which have dispensed with the kingship making them purely ceremonial.

I wonder what’s fairy tale about a king and/or queen sitting on a gold-plated throne who postulates rules of equity and fairness and who pontificates on the value of democracy. Set aside the fairy-tale nostalgia and vacationer charm, liberal democratic sensibilities question the relevance of the king and queen today.

Perhaps we must look beyond the glitz and glamour of royal weddings to realise that our fascination with them is actually rooted in the legacy of the British Empire. Maybe we are still attached to our colonial past. Maybe this wedding is merely old-fashioned escapism. Maybe Harry and Markle’s marriage ignites olden romantic narratives that are ingrained within us. Maybe the royal nuptial plays out as a magical and enchanting fable simply because there is need to market and revive interest in the monarchy’s dwindling image. If this is the case, there can be no fairy tale in that.

ASHVANI
MAHABIR, Cunupia