Some Weddings Are More Royal Than Others

There's a royal wedding happening this weekend. It's not just any old royal wedding either, oh my word no. This isn't the pairing of two spawns of disempowered losers with surnames like Lothringen-Hesse-Glatz-Wolfenshchutlz surround by a cluster of other nondescript irrelevants whose surnames are designed to remind you of places they don't rule anymore. It isn't even a royal wedding involving the still ruling house of some trivial flea bite nation nobody has ever heard of like Swaziland, Luxembourg or Spain. No, this is the big one a member of the British royal family is tying the knot. That's right; Britain, compared with which Denmark is a nature strip on the verge of Europe and Liechtenstein is a Swiss window box. On a foggy day, with one eye closed and your head held at the right angle you can still mistake Britain for a relevant and independent nation. And now a member of their royal family is getting married. Not just a distant and moderately loathsome member either but Prince William himself. He's marrying a girl named Kate I believe.

Naturally the media has been going nuts. At least they have in this country, I don't know what they're doing in Britain possibly commenting on the country's economic woes. All over Australia gushing references have been made to Prince William frequently referring to him as the heir to the throne. As I understand it there already is one of those. An elderly guy, a bit strange, talks to plants. He's still alive isn't he? In any event terms like "heir to the throne" only have genuine meaning if the current occupant looks like they may be leaving it soon. I don't know about you but in my opinion the queen looks good for another eighty years or so. Anybody who bases any forward plans on women from that family dying any time soon simply hasn't studied their history.

Still as royal weddings go this is about as big as it gets and the media are getting all damp pantied in anticipation. The media loves a royal wedding; it's ratings gold for virtually no effort. For the past month we have had articles, documentaries, even news reports dedicated to the royal wedding and all at no more cost than it take to hire some hack to use the words "Kate and Wills" in a sentence. There are the earnest discussions between up to half a dozen people at a time on what the dress may actually look like. Here's a clue, it will be white, there will be a veil and a train. The only possible spark of interest would be if the one wearing it was Prince William. Nobody actually has the faintest idea what the dress will look like which doesn't stop half an hour of high rating television with a group of people essentially agreeing that they don't have the faintest idea what the dress will look like.

The other fascinating thing of course is the fact that Kate Middleton is a commoner. Apparently this is really exciting news, so exciting that one imagines that most royal watchers haven't encountered one before. There are actually quite a few of them out there. Still there have been earnest discussions about whether its a good thing or a bad thing that Prince William isn't marrying someone who shares his number of recessive genes. No doubt some dusty historian will produce evidence that one of Henry VIII's second cousins once removed married an earwig and that therefore there is precedent or something.

This entire orgy of royal wedding mania will culminate on Friday in an avalanche of commemorative china and pomp finely laced with circumstance. I know that I will be glued to the television set this weekend. The new season of Doctor Who is starting.