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Dress, hair, coach and cake will tell us nothing about monarchy, class or modern Britain. Just relax and enjoy the fun
Relax. It is not important. The dress is not important. The bouquet is not important. Whether the hair is up or down is not important. The guest list is fine but for some silly hitches. The royal wedding tells us nothing about the state of the monarchy, the fate of the government, the class system, or the habits and morals of the young. Its global fascination lies in its re-enactment of the princess myth, of commoner marrying warrior prince. For all but the desperately glum, it is the apotheosis of public celebration – and much cheaper than the Olympics.
That said, you could have fooled me. The tosh poured from the media these past few weeks has tested to breaking point the laws of demand and supply for journalism. Kate Middleton's choice of dress may be of absorbing interest to some, but that it indicates (in the Daily Telegraph) a monarchy choosing between "a link to the past, or upper-middle-class safety, or fiercely up-to-date" is beyond me. How the bride wears her hair can apparently hold the attention of 300 million women worldwide, but it cannot seriously suggest partiality or otherwise to the coalition. There may be good reasons for the Middletons to arrive at the Abbey by internal combustion engine rather than horse, but this is hardly, as alleged, a snub to the Green party.
As for the cake, the gastrointestinal pundit, Amanda Foreman, opines that the addition of a chocolate-biscuit version to the customary fruitcake indicates that royal couple are "comfortable in themselves". Indeed "because of it [the chocolate biscuit] they are going to shape the monarchy in ways that will bring life and vigour to that institution". If Britain's monarchy is susceptible to a biscuit, Foreman must know more about its ingredients than I do.
The global brain clearly has trouble dissociating the fascination of a happening from its significance, or otherwise. Confusion has certainly been sown by the wedding being attended, unwisely, by so many of the pseudo-trappings of statehood, such as the attendance of dotty foreign monarchs and dodgy ambassadors. This was bound to pollute a family occasion with political controversy, and so it has done. Whoever thought the occasion suitable to the diplomatic corps should be fired. William is not a serving monarch but a serving junior air force officer.
The wedding of the second in line to the throne would "matter" only if the British crown carried power or influence over the lives of British citizens and if, in addition, there was an acute shortage of candidates for the job. Neither is the case. The Queen and the Prince of Wales are in rude health. The impotence of the crown has been established for three centuries, and there are dozens in line to the throne.
So why has the BBC found 550 otherwise unemployed staff to work on up 10 hours of wedding coverage? Why is NBC flying over its entire anchor team? Why has the editor of Majesty magazine gone back to smoking? Why is Oprah Winfrey reduced to interviewing a village publican acquainted with the bride's father on whether he has tasted a pint of wedding ale? Have none of them read Coke, Bagehot and Dicey on the constitutional role of parliament? Have they all got it plain wrong?
The answer seems to be yes. Everyone – including wedding-hating republicans – has been sucked into a constitutional confidence trick, that Britain's tradition of anthropomorphising the state in the body of a person depends on who that person is, that it depends in some sense on the merit of the holder. It does not. It depends on the continuity of the blood line, that's all. The tradition is robust precisely because merit is irrelevant.
There are many ways in which nations dress themselves for the ceremonies of statehood. Blessed with a rare national continuity, England – in collusion with its Celtic neighbours and some Commonwealth adjuncts – retains a hereditary monarch as figurehead, largely because it has circumvented the normal processes by which consent to rule disposes of autocrats: usually revolution and decapitation. When they did apply, in the 17th century, the republican option proved so unappealing that the nation reverted to monarchy, even to the appalling Stuarts.
Constitutional scholars and dyed-in-the-wool republicans still go to great lengths to detect chinks of discretion and therefore significance in the office of monarch, declaring it unacceptable in a modern democracy. Their task is assisted by the lack of a properly codified constitution that might lay the monarchical ghost once and for all. But while the office clearly has a "role", as in opening parliament, heading the Church of England and getting married in Westminster Abbey, it has no authority over the government of the country. If it did, it would soon cease to exist, as was threatened during the last real monarchical crisis, over parliamentary reform in 1910.
The only requirement of the monarch is to perform public duties as formal head of state – in other words, to be a human being and look good on the night. If there were any question of merit, it would imply that there was some role for which merit was a criterion, which is why the gender or faith of the monarch should no longer be an issue. The virtue of heredity in selecting this person is solely that it is simple, and brooks no argument. When there has been argument, as when Edward VIII appeared unacceptable as king in 1936, he was briskly and unceremoniously bundled from office. Monarchy is no more than a constitutional device, a vehicle for the dignities of statehood.
That is why the royal wedding cannot hope to bear the crushing weight of meaning heaped upon it. We are not witnessing the marriage of Henry V of England to Catherine of France, nor even of a monarch or a soon to be monarch. Only an obsessive could detect in the coupling of William and Kate some breathtaking leap across a divide of income or class. We are certainly getting a lesson in the power of global celebrity, but we get those every day. As for the dress, hair, coach and cake, they tell us no more about modern monarchy than Susan Boyle's voice tells us about modern musicology.
Hence the royal wedding can be enjoyed precisely because it is unimportant, because it lurches close to Ruritania out of Barbara Cartland without quite touching them, without losing contact with authenticity. The American networks may scream that the prince is just two heartbeats from ruling 60 million people, but they know this is nonsense.
The Anglican marriage service, to do it justice, has little of the aloof formality of more orthodox faiths, or of the "arranged" nuptials of some cultures. It allows spectators to witness the happiness and hopes of two young people embarking on an intimate journey of uncertain outcome. The concept of public romance may seem voyeuristic and the context antiquely sexist. But there is no point in denying the reason why the world's eyes are fastened on London today. It is because an attractive young woman has achieved the apogee of female romanticism since the days of King Arthur. She has found herself a real live prince. Best just smile.