Royal wedding: Why Australians will be fixed to their screens

The royal wedding rehearsal in Windsor. Picture: MEGA.

If you grow weary of the inescapable wall-to-wall coverage of the royal wedding, just imagine what the bride and groom are going through.

I can’t be absolutely sure of this but faced with the enormity of their undertaking, Harry and Meghan might secretly be pining for a quick escape to Vegas where they would be privately married by an unconvincing Elvis impersonator.

The media frenzy means republicans can’t ignore what to us is a grim, long and drawn out piece of bad theatre but we might have some fun tomorrow by musing darkly on such regal conundrums like, what happens if Harry and Meghan have twins? Will the second born be whisked away to a distant castle with an iron mask placed on its bonce?

I am an avowed republican and while I regard the institution of the monarchy as deeply flawed, I don’t dislike the royals. I do have to wonder that in a supposedly egalitarian society like ours, why we get so obsessed about their comings and goings?

Is the Australian media’s virtual blanket coverage a sign of what the people want or is the cart leading the horse? Do Australians really care about the royal wedding or is it just a piece of fluff, a distraction?

A bin badge is worn by a Royal fan waiting along the proposed route of the wedding carriage procession. Picture: AFP.

Let me say Prince Harry and Meghan Markle seem like very nice people and I wish them well. Harry is an unusual royal. Two deployments to Afghanistan, both of whom at his insistence and in combat roles with the 3rd Regiment Army Air Corps when the House of Windsor would have preferred he was placed out of harm’s way — in the rear with the gear, as the camouflaged lot like to say.

His uncle, Andrew, flew helicopters for the RAF in the Falklands War but Harry’s demand that he be treated and regarded as any other soldier in Afghanistan, despite specific Taliban threats to kidnap and/or kill him, make him a special royal in this republican’s eye.

There is something very different about this generation of royals. Prior to William and Harry reaching adulthood, the House of Windsor was a staid, dusty institution running out the clock, seemingly headed the way of many European royal families, either gone entirely or allowed to persist as a meek anachronism.

We see ourselves in the Windsors.

A more open and accessible future was thrust upon the House of Windsor after the death of Princess Diana. Diana was hand chosen by the Windsors as a suitable brood mare. She became more popular than the royals themselves and after her death, the British public determined the hideous exploitation she had endured must end. Prince William married a commoner (gasp) in Kate Middleton and with that the wall came tumbling down.

I doubt the old-world monarchy would have survived long into the 21st century anyway. We could start with the visions of the rug chewing lunacy of George III, who lost the United States but picked up Australia in a real estate deal that some may see as a net loss. George suffered from porphyria, a disease which affects the central nervous system and whose primary symptom is purple urine. In the latter part of his reign he developed what in 21st century terms would be diagnosed as an acute depressive disorder.

For many years haemophilia was called the royal disease because it was through various royal houses in Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Royal fans wait along the proposed route of the carriage procession. Picture: AFP.

This is what happens when cousins marry.

And then there’s Edward VIII, who was a Nazi sympathiser, guest of Adolf Hitler and possibly a spy for the Nazis who had to be threatened with court martial by Winston Churchill after he failed to return from Portugal to take up his duties as an officer in the Royal Navy.

Therein lies one of the reasons republicans like myself find monarchies distasteful. Leadership and authority is not determined by merit but by circumstances of birth.

Happily, for every royal like Edward VIII, there are good ones like his niece, Elizabeth II and his brother, George VI, a reluctant king who provided great solace and comfort to his subjects in wartime, ultimately at the expense of his own health.

To muddy the genetic waters even further, on the other side of the line is Prince Philip’s family. Depending on your view, Phillip is seen as the weird old uncle of the tribe and while his public remarks sometimes furrow brows, it could have been a lot worse. Phillip’s family, from the Dano-German House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, was a sad collection of try-hards, dilettantes and callous lunatics.

Phillip’s uncle died after being bitten by a poison monkey. His father, who largely ignored Phillip, is said to have possessed the largest private collection of pornography in all Europe, most of it ghastly bromides of sadomasochistic activity. Everyone needs a hobby, I guess.

Put aside the jokes of in-breeding, the lives of privilege by birth, the jewels and the associated finery and we see the Windsors are a family like most others with their own experiences of mental illness, unforeseen tragedies with occasional triumphant moments like marriages and births thrown in.

Perhaps that’s why so many Australians will tune to the royal wedding this weekend. They see much of themselves and their own families in the House of Windsor, albeit with a lot less jewellery and cheaper frocks. Others will have no choice but to endure it but as a republican, I see the royal marriage as cause for celebration and a sign the House of Windsor’s gene pool is set to expand again, leaving behind the shallow, fetid pond it had become.