[Mb-civic] Two Doofuses, Too Adorable - The royals and real romance.

[George R. Milman]

Michael Kinsley

April 10, 2005

Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier of Monaco, who died last week, were your
textbook royal marriage. But for a royal romance that reaches depths of
profound emotion that seems almost human, give me Charles and Camilla any
day.

Could it all be a brilliant PR stratagem? Years of tawdry royal shenanigans
have drastically reduced the British people's interest in being patronized
by the royal family. But maybe some royal functionary ("Keeper of the
Queen's Spin"?) had the brilliant insight that patronizing this collection
of odd ducks and losers can be just as effective a bond as being patronized
by them. Repeat after me: What an adorable pair of doofuses!

Under the British system of government, the royal family is supposed to keep
the nation supplied with gossip on the one hand and be a positive moral
example on the other. This is a tough combo. Here in the United States, by
contrast, we believe in checks and balances. So we split these
responsibilities. We have Hollywood celebrities to supply the fodder for
gossip, and politicians to supply the positive moral . Well, we have
politicians to supply the gossip, and business leaders to supply the
positive . OK, we have business leaders to supply the gossip and clergymen
to supply . Oh heck, I guess it's up to journalists to supply the positive
moral example.

In the United States, we don't split the role of head of government from the
role of head of state. In Britain, they do. And this is the best defense of
the monarchy: People can express their love of country by adoring the queen
without implying any view either way about the prime minister. This is
pleasant for the queen. And it's healthy for the prime minister. Keeps him
humble. Or at least humbler.

By contrast, the U.S. presidency is an ego-inflating machine. The president
moves in a vast imperial cocoon, unsurpassed in grandeur since the pharaohs
of ancient Egypt. (And those guys didn't get the really over-the-top stuff
until they were already dead.)

It would take a level of humility incompatible with running for public
office in the first place for a president not to think, "Hey, I'm a pretty
cool guy." Every time George W. Bush hears "Hail to the Chief," the odds go
up that some unsuspecting country is going to find itself getting
democratized - with all the violence, anarchy, foreign occupation, arbitrary
arrests, torture of prisoners, suppression of dissent and random deaths that
word has come to imply. 

By making itself a laughingstock, the British royal family has adapted to
the needs of the current moment. We don't worry too much these days about
the problem of politicians being held in excessively high regard. 

Thanks to modern political science, we enjoy politicians who dangerously
overvalue themselves and a citizenry that dangerously undervalues them at
the same time. Once again, the royal family is there to help.

Instead of an outlet for surplus admiration, the family turned itself into
an outlet for excessive mockery and contempt. This allows the politicians to
retain a minimum of dignity and respect as they go about the people's
business. 

British journos are doing their best, mocking Camilla's dowdiness, Prince
Charles' eccentricity, the bumbled details of the wedding. But they can't
destroy the romance of a love story that exposes Charles and Diana, and
Edward and Mrs. Simpson as the cold, calculated contrivances they were.

There's no special magic about a prince approaching middle age who marries a
young society beauty. And the more we learn about Princess Diana, the less
magical that story seems. A king who gives up his crown for a witch is more
in the Brothers Grimm tradition. But the abdication tale remains far from
inspiring.

Now, what about a prince who marries a young beauty out of his sense of
duty, who waits for decades until a car crash frees him and then marries the
woman he really loves - a woman who almost everyone else in the world finds
remarkably unattractive, a woman he didn't need to marry in order to enjoy
her companionship as he had for decades, a woman his family and the world
didn't want him to marry.

And what about a woman who watched her longtime lover marry a much younger
beauty; who married someone else herself out of some kind of bitter realism,
who fell in love with a young future king but is marrying an old weirdo who
very likely won't ever occupy the throne, a woman who is inviting a lifetime
of public mockery for every aspect of her public appearance - now that is a
love story.

And an instructive one. It teaches us about the virtue of patience, about
the shallowness of physical appearance, about the courage to resist fashion.


Camilla's values aren't original; they're the values of the British upper
class, and they're not as innocent as they seem. The shabby clothing and the
perennial bad hair day are not the ingenuous result of indifference to
fashion; they are a calculated statement of superiority to fashion. 

But this isn't 1805. The global forces of fashion and celebrity are way more
powerful these days than the once-triumphant British upper class. What once
might have been seen as insufferable snobbery (and what may even now be
intended as snobbery, which is endearingly hopeless right there) seems
charming and touching.

So I'm going out on a limb here and declaring Camilla and Charles the
greatest love story of the 21st century, so far. And they had better live
happily ever after. 

 

Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times 

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