The Royal Fascination
Two hundred forty years ago, this fledgling nation was at war with Great Britain to sever its ties with the British Crown. Thirty-six years later, we were back at war with Great Britain, when that country’s Royal Navy impressed (meaning capture and involuntary servitude) American sailors on the high seas and threatened to take back what they had lost in the American Revolution.
Since that time, the ebbs and flows of the Anglo-American relationship have largely been amicable- especially since 1917, when the United States entered the First World War and in 1941, when we again entered the Second World War. In both instances, our one-time adversary relied upon our assistance to defeat Germany (along with Germany’s allies) and the trans-Atlantic friendship between the United Kingdom and the United States was thus sealed for many generations.
All that said, it is difficult to understand America’s fascination with Britain’s royal family. After all, it was the concept of a ruling dynasty that was and is the philosophical antithesis of what America is all about. Where Britain has always been a society based on class, the American experiment has always facilitated upward mobility regardless of one’s background and heritage- especially since the end of slavery and segregation. To suggest that a perpetual dynasty rule over a nation, decade after decade, century after century, is an anathema to Americans as well as her Western Hemisphere neighbors.
This fascination with the British royals was piqued three times in the twentieth century- in 1952 when Queen Elizabeth II was crowned, in 1983 when the Prince of Wales married Lady Diana Spencer, and in 1997 when Lady Diana died from injuries sustained in a vehicular accident while travelling in a Paris tunnel. This fascination continued in this century, especially when Prince William married Catherine Middleton and when this marriage produced the “royal issue” of two boys and a girl, in 2013, 2015 and in 2018.
Tomorrow, May 19th, Prince William’s bearded younger brother, Prince Harry, will marry an American divorcee, one Meghan Markle- an action which caused his great-great uncle, Edward the VIII, to abdicate the crown in 1936 when he married another American divorcee, Willis Simpson. Adding to the palace intrigue of Harry’s nuptials is the fact that Ms. Markle is the bi-racial child of a white father and a black mother- an historic first for any member of Britain’s royal family.
Yet even the novelty of Prince Harry’s marriage to Ms. Markle doesn’t quite explain America’s ongoing fascination, and seeming obsession, with all things royal.
As an exchange student in the spring of 1980, back when the world was young no less, I found the trappings of the British monarchy to be quite curious and, to a lesser extent, somewhat comical given my own upbringing in the comparatively unceremonious and unadorned United States. I thought to myself that the richly festooned uniforms of the British military, though stylish, seemed to be akin to fancy giftwrap covering popinjay soldiers- admittedly a biased view from this naïve and unsophisticated “colonial.” In my study of British history, both here in the States and at the University of London’s Birkbeck College, I came to understand why Britain must have its monarchy, and even came to support its continuation. Yet I still could not understand why Americans could be so enthralled with something so utterly un-American as a reigning monarch and her family.
Almost forty years later, I still don’t quite “get” it.
So, in the early hours of tomorrow morning, televisions around the United States will be tuned in to the pomp and ceremony of a royal wedding. The interest in it will be keen and even, perhaps, voyeuristic for many millions in the country…
…perhaps presenting an opportunity to this skeptic to catch up on some reading, and break away from his addiction to the oh-so-contemporary phenomenon of breaking news.
-Drew Nickell, 18 May 2018
© 2018 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.
author of “Bending Your Ear- a Collection of Essays on the Issues of Our Times”
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