When Harry weds Meghan — Why we care
So, a guy called Harry is marrying a girl called Meghan. And half the world is enthralled. This is despite the fact that Harry (and soon, Meghan) belongs to a very different world – one where people are called "royals," where they are literally born to privilege, where it is an individual’s right to lord it over others, to have serfs, to sit on thrones, to live in palaces and eat fine food, all paid for by tax-payers, and not those dining.
That entitlement, to a payment-free life of privilege where someone, basic merits aside, is arbitrarily a "King" and other people must pick up their bills, is royalty – that’s why it looks so arcane, so out of place, in our world. Most of us live in a very different universe, where we earn the right to be respected, show our merit, labour each day, returning home, often swaying with gentle tiredness, to our daily chores, our daily budgets, our daily dreams, our daily sacrifices.
So, why do we – the people of meritocracy – love Britain’s royals and their shaadis?
Perhaps it’s because – not despite – they are so archaic.
Looking at the British royals transports us back in time. At one level, British royal history takes us to a fabled place, shimmering somewhere between the cold floors of Westminster Abbey, the gilded walls of Buckingham Palace, in the shadows under the Koh-i-noor, between the spires that pierce the sky above the Tower of London. The royals take us back to a perfectly beautiful little land, of stunning monuments, gorgeous robes, lush gardens, parchments that changed humanity, a few dishes that taste like parchment itself.
But the royals do more.
They take us back to a world where we all "knew our place". There is no getting away from that – celebrating the British royals is also celebrating a world where most of us would once have been enslaved, the ancestors of these very royals ruling over us.
British colonialism formed the largest empire in history, Australia, Africa, Asia, America, under its sway. Many of our elders felt empire’s sting – the roads you couldn’t walk on. The clubs you couldn’t enter. The jobs you couldn’t get. The freedoms you couldn’t enjoy.
But there was a fascinating catch too.
The British accompanied all the cruelties of empire with art, architecture, poetry, philosophy that was utterly out of this world – so out of it, it made you forget you were enslaved when you read a line of Tennyson, or followed, holding your breath, the adventures of Sherlock Holmes.
Its culture was the great magic trick of the British Empire – and its undoing too, for it both entranced and freed you. The moment you read Bertrand Russell, for instance – as a certain Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi did – you knew you were not born to be a slave. You were born to be free.
And so, the Empire faced challenge from the people it enslaved. And so, the Empire crumbled, rolling up like a great, worn carpet from all those corners around the world.
But why do we hark back to it?
It is this very combination – of its extraordinary cultural world – that made us remain fond of empire. We knew it was brutal. We knew it was beautiful. We knew it was enslavement. We knew we, the enslaved, would end it.
That fascination endures, and thus, many of us - avid viewers, perhaps, of The Crown, fans of Downton Abbey which makes British feudalism look lovely – will even flock to London "for" the royal wedding.
But British royalty didn’t always exert such pull. The aura crumbled when Princess Diana – fascinating for her movie-star looks – suddenly died. As tawdry revelations – conversations of Prince Charles with Camilla Parker Bowles, Prince Andrew, Sarah Ferguson’s strange affairs – tumbled out of palace cupboards, the British royal family began turning more off than on.
All that changed with "Will-Kat" – or, the match between Prince William and Katherine Middleton, the young, cool couple that again changed the image of the British royals, from frogs to princes. Prince William – quiet, shy, speaking often of his late mother Diana – was a change from the standard, stiff-upper-lipped pompous British royal. William’s love affair – spread over ten years, from college to jobs – with Kate, the couple’s reported hook-ups, their break-ups, their come-backs, fascinated observers.
Importantly, Katherine was not a royal, born to someone calling her "Your Highness" at breakfast. She was a "commoner", from a regular family which worked, did its own dishes, drove its own car. Her love story – a beautiful, middle-class Cinderella, with a gawky, prematurely balding prince – was a hit.
The Harry-Meghan shaadi will be a bigger one.
For Meghan isn’t a British commoner but the closest thing you can be to royalty in America – a successful TV star. It is Meghan Markle's delicious mix of achievement with a tough past – she grew up mixed-race, not easy anywhere, reportedly grew distant from her father, suffered a divorce – that won Harry’s heart (and the approval ratings of a thousand TV channels around the world that will broadcast this royal wedding live).
This shaadi will feel even more meritocratic than the last.
It will lend even more credibility to an institution that otherwise represents a fuddy-duddy past, more in place in a museum than the real world.
This is the great brand revamp of British royalty then.
We are all a part of it now – not under its feet or feeling its whip, but instead buying a democratic slice of "royal wedding" cake, enjoying a cream tea, raising a toast in a pub, even quoting Shakespeare’s sonnets after consuming too many champagne ice creams being sold across Britain by delighted grocery stores.
As, as we, the formerly enslaved, now help Britain’s tourism, memorabilia, hospitality and media industries earn millions of much-needed pounds, its royals will help a gloomy post-Brexit economy make some hay while the sun shines.
Or, given it's Britain, while the rain pours.