No, I’m Not A Monarchist
So I’m old enough to have been a wee little impressionable girl when Prince Charles married Lady Diana Spencer. It made a HUGE impression on me. It was intensely pagenty and huge and at the time seemed weird and romantic (and it didn’t take many years for me to think, “eww, he was old and she was a child and what a mess.”) And then my aunt and uncle ran off and eloped in the rose garden at Windsor Castle, and honestly, I became an Anglophile through and through (while always retaining my stubborn anti-Royalist stance. Because really, I may love Granny Weatherwax, but my soul is pure Sam Vimes).
My first visit overseas was the UK when I was 15 and I was overwhelmed and a lot in love, and also a little freaked out by the massive feeling of “This is not me.” Scotland? That felt like me - big and boisterous and not so well behaved and sunny (I know, again, what are the odds) and a little goofy.
So while I’m not going to set my (non-existent) DVR for tomorrow’s wedding, I’m kind of on board with the fuss, in part because this is a couple in the ultimate public eye and they seem kind of sweet and normal, and in part because I watched these kids grow up on the television and in the papers and they had to watch their mom die and mourn in public, and in the face of all this pageantry and wedding hoopla and monarchist succession, this is still a kid, even if he’s a prince, who is taking one of the biggest steps of his life without his mom there to sob with joy that he found love. And I’m a sap to not be happy that he seems to have found a nice girl and will hopefully treat her as an equal and a princess, if that’s what she wants, but more than anything as the girl who will put up with his flaws and his family.
I think it’s kind of romantic. And I’m so glad to just be a regular girl looking for a nice regular boy. (I say that, of course with all my inherent irony, but I mean it nonetheless).
