Rapidly losing luster...

My wife's obsession with this wedding is getting old, fast. I was just expect (can't really say forced, I guess) to sit through the entire 3 hour BBC coverage of the event AGAIN, beginning to end. Katie is due home from work at 10 PM, so I'm sure the fun will begin all over again... but without me, this time.

It was a spectacular event, and I have to say that I think it is flat out AMAZING that this sort of pageantry and pomp is STILL so frigging popular in England, and (by extension) the entire world. I am surprised at the 2 billion viewers, but I have no doubt it is probably true. After all, Diana was THE most recognized face alive, second only to Jesus Christ (not physically present for the last 2000 years) and Mohammad Ali (not dead, but out of the camera's eye since the Olympic Torch lighting ceremony). The British Empire spanned the globe, holding and ruling territory on every continent, and reigning over 1/5 of the world's land mass right up until the last century... so the connection with the monarchy isn't that far away for people in Egypt, India, Ireland, North and South America, Africa, and Southeast Asia. William (and his grandmother, of course) are related by blood and marriage to at least 11 of seventeen European monarchies and royal houses, and Elizabeth II still reigns as Sovereign Queen over the entire Commonwealth of Nations, which all by itself constitutes 53 separate and individual nations.

For example, in his book 1776, David McCullough describes in his opening chapter the procession of HRM King George III as he made his way from St. James Palace to Westminster (a route almost identical to the one followed by William this morning) to open Parliament. The crowd that was documented had stood in the morning quiet for hours, ten and fifteen people deep, just for a glimpse of the King as he rode past in his massive gilded carriage. They cheered and waved gloves and kerchiefs as he rumbled by, and the people who saw him remembered it and wrote about it the way Ryan recalls shaking hands with President Clinton. That was only for a bi-annual opening of Parliament, and not for a once in a generation regal event like this wedding... yet it sounds remarkably similar in scope and impact as this event was today.

Think about it... 500,000 people standing in the dark (some for more than 24 hours) just for a first-hand view of that kiss on the balcony of Buckingham Palace? I don't think so. It was for the sense of unity... of being part of a more than 1,000 year tradition that connects each and every citizen of the United Kingdom, where as we (here in America, I mean) simply watched.

On the second viewing of the ceremony, I heard the Bishop of London give a sermon to William and Kate in which he quoted both Milton and Chaucer, and I pointed out to Liz that both those men, along with dozens of other famous authors, poets, musicians and artists, are actually lying in rest immediately behind the ambo from which he was speaking! Pope, Shakespeare, Milton, Browning, Dickens, Handel, Tennyson, Longfellow, Yeats, Scott... all resting peacefully just a few feet from the apse of the cathedral. THAT is the kind of connection these people are enjoying with their collective, mutual national heritage when they celebrate these sorts of events.

The genius of the British monarchy (and I am using the classic definition of that word... the driving spirit that brings success... not an over-abundance of intelligence) is that it is now separate from the government. The PM and the Cabinet can fail utterly, the House of Commons can degenerate into a brawling bunch of hooligans (which it has periodically)... but the Royal Family is untouched by all that. Just as when someone in the Royal Family does something stupid (dressing like a Wermacht officer in the Afrika Corps for Halloween, for example), it is little or no skin off the PM's nose, either.

The government keeps things running... but the image of the United Kingdom, and specifically England, is the Monarchy and the Royal Family. They represent an unbroken line back to 1066 and the Conquest by William I. In fact, I think it is more than a coincidence that, come the 1,000th anniversary of the Conquest, there is every chance that another William will be sitting on the throne (William V)... and we can say we saw the boy get married in 2011.