Another Royal wedding

In my end is my beginning, wrote poet T. S. Eliot in East Coker . Most people, when they get married, seem to share this view of ends and beginnings. But when the British royalty, which has begun to look rather common, does so, the media forces the rest of the world to take note of the event. Everyone forgets Bernard Shaw's insightful admonition that marriage, be it so royal is, in the final analysis the utterly “ghastly public confession of a strictly private intention”. On the royal wedding, at least 45 per cent of the British say they are bored by the whole thing. About half think it is all fine really because we love our Queen — even if we reserve our judgment on monarchy itself. A few more are undecided. Some think it is wrong to blow away around 20 million or so pounds on a wedding. A minuscule percentage wants to end monarchy but has no substitute to offer. This is the problem because, weddings apart, the British monarchy does no harm to anyone. The British have had kings and queens for ever and ever, some of them good but most of them complete washouts. But in typically bumbling way, they have managed to give the world some important things, such as the Cabinet form of government.

King George I, freshly imported from the House of Hanover in Germany, could not speak English and had to rely on his first minister, Robert Walpole, to run the country. He became primus inter pares or first among equals or prime minister. Thus was the Cabinet system born. Had George I learnt English, things might have turned out differently. Few also know that the British, in a fit of Republican frenzy, cut off the head of one of their kings, Charles I in 1649 — only to restore his son Charles II as King and monarch a scant eleven years later. Since then their monarchy has batted on and on and on. British monarchs have gotten married in great splendour, except once when one of them ran off in 1936 to marry a mere Mrs Simpson who was, oh dear, an American.

The present Queen is a direct beneficiary of that act of supreme devotion. Her father became the King when his brother abdicated. She has been the monarch for 59 years and looks like going on for a bit more, and may well overtake Queen Victoria's record of 63 years. This has made her eldest son, Prince Charles who is well over 60; wonder what lies in store for him. Another family wedding, mate?

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