America, Quit Trying To Make William & Kate Happen
LatestWe hate to break it to the American media, but none of you has the “inside story” on Prince William’s engagement. And no one really cares.
It should be the perfect story for an audience raised on The Princess Diaries: “commoner” marrying prince; “fairy-tale wedding.” The media’s certainly carrying on like everyone’s salivating on the edge of their seats waiting to see what gown Kate Middleton wears or how the Queen acts during the ceremony. And yet, for all the hype and hoopla, it’s really hard to care. Yes, we’re talking about the woman who ostensibly will be the next Queen of England, and I’m not dismissing that. However, the story here is remarkably average, royal factor aside: the two met in college, carried on and off for years, and now seem ready to settle down. And if that’s the inside scoop, I really can’t muster the interest to finish one of the purported blockbusters, or really be bothered about when he puts a ring on it.
Why? Well, partially because we don’t actually know anything, and there’s probably not a lot to know here anyhow. Check out Vanity Fair‘s exhaustive story about Kate Middleton and the Prince: it’s like 6 pages of nothing, about two people who’ve done nothing terribly interesting. Says one royal-watcher in the piece, “We know very little about Kate Middleton and probably never will, providing they do their job right. Historically a degree of mystery about royalty has been an advantage.” Yeah, but historically, people had a different relationship to royalty: what might have once been intriguing is now just further reason to ignore a story that’s both wholly unrelated to our lives, and too commonplace to be exotic or exciting.