After so many recent natural disasters, William and Kate finally provided a positive global event (and I’m not just talking about the PR value of it to Britain, which is expected to be greater than the 2012 Olympics will be!) Apart from some ‘harrumphing’ from the anti-royalists, the big day seemed to spread a genuine feeling of warmth and happiness into the world. Why was this? What was all the fuss about?

For people of my age, who were around for the last major royal wedding of Diana and Charles, this is the latest chapter in a story which began thirty years ago in a time when celebrity culture was still in its infancy. I remember witnessing this same sense of communal euphoria at the time of their wedding; It seems to be a national (and international) projection of what arises around any wedding; the feeling of hope. By taking on a lifelong commitment to each other, the newly weds become a symbol of this hope – the hope that true love actually exists.

But we all know how the last fairytale wedding ended – the writing was on the wall before the vows were even spoken (in their televised pre-wedding interview Prince Charles responded to the suggestion of them being ‘very much in love’ by saying ‘Yes, whatever that means…’ Ouch! Not a good omen for the start of a lifelong commitment of love.

But men have changed and evolved since then – haven’t they? We presume that William hasn’t grown up with quite the same ‘stiff upper lip, don’t cry, repress your feelings’ idea of masculinity which Charles must have endured. (If you’ve seen ‘The Kings Speech’ you get a good representation of this rigidity in his grandfather and great grandfather). I can’t help thinking that some of the hope now being projected on this royal wedding is born out of the need to put right what went wrong with Charles and Diana; the need to have a happy ending to the story. In William and Kate the world sees two people who really do seem to be in love, and they appear to be lovely people too. Who wouldn’t wish them well? Perhaps in our post-Diana, celebrity obsessed culture we are more cynical now than we were in the Eighties, but not so cynical it seems to want to wish William the ‘happy ever after’ his Mother never found.

17th May 2011