Oh, how the monarchy is modernising! Look at lovely, jokey Harry with his openness about mental health and his glowing fiancee, who astonishingly has had a life, is not a dumb blonde and says things about female independence. Oh, how they have moved on, this new generation of royals. They are just like us, after all.
Except they are not.
So the latest news about the commoners invited to the royal wedding is really stunning in its declaration of who’s who and what’s what. Kensington Palace (probably using the retch-inducing phrase “reach out”) announced earlier this year that Meghan and Harry were going “to allow members of the public to join in their celebration”. Very special people representing “youth” and “diversity” and — whisper it quietly — poor people would be allowed inside the perimeter of Windsor Castle. This is not just a wedding, remember, this is an attempt to build a bridge between high society and well ... society.
Twelve-hundred hand-picked “ordinary” people, many from charities that the royals support, will be let into the castle’s grounds. They will be there for hours and hours, and yet, it seems, they will not get so much as a vol-au-vent (a small round case of puff pastry). Those who work with deprived and alienated people have been advised in letters from lord lieutenants “to bring a picnic lunch as it will not be possible to buy food and drink on site”. What? What kind of invite is that?
It’s one that absolutely makes clear what is happening. That’s what. It never had anything to do with altruism. These ordinary people will effectively be extras for the TV coverage. They’ll make up a crowd that will be beamed around the world. The royals’ net wealth is estimated around £400 million (Dh2.09 billion) — but now let Britons now bow down before their rulers and hope that a garage sandwich will tide them over. Oh, I know it is not a good time to be a republican, but quite honestly it never is. No one can begrudge the Queen, no one can’t admire the loveliness of Meghan, and on it goes. Only that kind of thinking is how this fountainhead of inequality is always made palatable.
I once refused to go to a wedding because there was a pay bar as well as one of those irritating wedding lists. So I am not a great one for a pay-as-you-go celebrations. I can’t see it as anything other than meanness. Have a party or don’t. These occasions are actually very boring for spectators: Hours of waiting around for a fleeting glimpse of a gloved hand as it speeds past. I was in the cathedral for Diana’s funeral, and on the way there we went past the crowds who had been sleeping in the street overnight. Weirdly, I was at Windsor for Harry’s father’s “low-key” wedding to Camilla, hoping, I suppose, for the ghost of Diana to appear. The crowds were quite sparse, but had their flags to wave. What makes people wait for hours to do this, I remember asking a bored policeman. “We call them cat-stranglers,” he said. I didn’t know what that meant. “Women so mad they strangle their own cats,” he informed me.
Now, though, the royalist media will go into overdrive and there will be a lot of reverential dross about protocol and etiquette. Debrett’s advises at least six canapes per guest before a wedding lunch. Harry and Meghan’s 600 actual guests will get the works, but the people chosen because they serve the most vulnerable in their communities will be left milling about for hours and are now Googling Windsor for the nearest supermarkets.
As a metaphor for inclusivity royal-style, though, it’s all perfect, isn’t it? Do please come and gawp and cheer, but bring your own sandwiches. The meanness of the super-rich is truly something to behold. Twenty-one-year-old Saeed Atcha told the Guardian that the news made him wonder if he should go to a nearby McDonald’s, but he wasn’t sure whether he’d be allowed to bring in a filet meal. He set up a magazine in Bolton after the 2011 riots and talked of the bemusement of some of the disadvantaged people his charity helps that the royals will scarcely offer invitees a drink. “It’s unfathomable,” he said. Not really, it’s the monarchy. Same as it ever was.
— Guardian News & Media Ltd
Suzanne Moore is a Guardian columnist.
