The values of the Middletons' class – hard work, respect for property and insular family life – are actually at odds with those of the aristocracy
Wake up. The honeymoon is over. Back to reality. Even princes have to go to work like normal people. And Kate, who has opted to be a full-time RAF officer's wife, can wave him off, as she is now living the dream on Anglesey. The dream means running her husband baths, watching him play polo and attending the odd charity bash with him. Apparently, she wanted this old-fashioned role, which some call wife, but I call "lovely assistant". Indeed, despite the palace's plea for privacy after the nuptial glut, it may well be impossible for Kate to "work" because of the huge amount of attention on her.
It has to be said, though, that up until now, Kate's jobs have seemed fairly token. Has this woman ever been financially independent? It seems rather she has spent her time being groomed to be a wife. That such grooming allows "a commoner" into the royals represents a triumph for the bourgeoisie. Last week's entrenching of establishment values, amid middlebrow mores and faux militarism, was lapped up by some. Many were indifferent. Few were stirred by pure republicanism, which remains abstract, but nonetheless we were repeatedly addressed as though we were all avid royalists. Royalists needed to pimp their romantic fantasy alongside their tea towels 24/7. The fantasy is that romance is always transformative. Mermaids get legs! Girls from the home counties get castles! The problem is that we know too much about the Middleton background to pretend this all happened naturally.
The Middletons were on full display; a small business compared to the firm, but there is something rather corporate and manufactured about them.
We have been invited both to sneer at them for social climbing, and to identify with them for their hard work and "ordinariness". Their back story represents almost a primer in the history of social mobility. From mining stock, Carole Middleton became an air hostess. She met her husband Michael while he was working as an air steward. They set up a family business selling party bags online. They made enough – we don't know how much, as their company is run as a partnership, so we don't see how much tax they pay – to send their three children to Marlborough College.
As is always the way, it's the woman, Carole, who is seen as socially aspirational and pushy. Her girls, Catherine and Pippa, have been called "the wisteria sisters", as they are adept in social climbing. It is a recurring motif from Austen to Osborne that women are the schemers who dream of an upwardly mobile escape.
It is Carole, too, who is said to have made the "gaffes"; saying the wrong thing to the Queen, chewing nicotine gum at Sandhurst. It is Carole's prawn-and-cottage-cheese diet we know about. It is Carole who was laughed at when she was finally invited to Balmoral. There she was, laying flat out in the damp grass with a ghillie to instruct her in deer stalking. Nothing could signal the gap between the Middletons and the aristocracy more than this. The Middletons may like the races and have shares in a horse, but they don't kill large animals for fun.
Blood sports are the province of our ruling classes, from our Queen to David Cameron. The bourgeoisie simply have to accept this is the way things are done.
The values of the Middletons' class – hard work, respect for property and insular family life – are actually at odds with those of the aristocracy, who don't work and inherit wealth. But the wedding achieved a sleight of hand in its illusion of harmony. Thus, the Middletons were the stars of the show. Carole was deemed to have dressed well enough. Pippa, upstaged by her own backside, is the new top totty. James, who until now was known mainly as a cross-dressing cake-maker who liked posting pictures of himself naked on Facebook, has been reinvented as a speechifying young blade. Indeed, the Middletons, in outfits and behaviour, were conservative enough. It was the royals who wore what they bloody well liked, with Beatrice and Eugenie cleverly suggesting Spiker and Sponge from Roald Dahl's James and the Giant Peach.
The dress, which was said to melt the hardest of republican hearts (really?), was a McQueen effort, with any radical edge softened, and unsurprisingly retro. Nothing to frighten the horses. Kate looked suitably demure. Except for the double nipple effect that this couture provided. The pretence of virginity is part of the facade, after all.
The prince's mother, as if we could forget, was sacrificed on that altar. This wedding served to remind us, though, that the Diana moment is long gone. Since about 2002 the royals have got their PR in order. The success of their press operation is manifest in the uniform nature of the fawning coverage.
Consent was assumed: we were all, we were repeatedly told, thrilled by this occasion. Hegemony was secured as Harry grinned at Pippa. The boring bits of the service, or the shots of most of the congregation unable to sing any of the hymns, were glossed over.
The celebration of reactionary values was duly achieved, by assuming we are all bound up in them. No wonder the Labour politicians – at least those invited – looked so out of place. This was the ruling class en masse, preening itself for letting in "a commoner". Us commoners should be duly grateful.
This young woman and her family may have got what they wanted, and they may give the monarchy a sheen of modernity. But there is little modern going on. The world of this wedding is that of a regressive culture in which women express their individuality by not wearing a hat, women are still unironically "given away", a good marriage is the sum of female achievement.
As was made clear, and indeed taken for granted by those who should know better, we all think like this, except a few crazed republicans. The institutions of Christianity and patriarchy are unquestionable. Well, it's a wedding! Don't be grouchy. Yet there is another world out here where supreme indifference was not borne out of any hostility to the couple, rather a disdain for every convention on display.
The bourgeoisie always presents its way of life as the only way to live. But there are others less stultifying. The fantasy that we may escape class, one at a time, through marriage, remains. The system on display last week is as rigid as it ever was. The acceptance of the Middletons by the monarchy was not some great moment of modernisation; it is simply a deal to ensure everything carries on as it always did.
Our consent to this deal is sewn up by the continuing narrative, which assures us that every girl wants a prince. And a fairytale wedding. Whatever we say. Mindless babbling about the intricate lacework on a dress will stop us from seeing the straitjacket stitched into its structure, surely? And the conservative heart that beats within.