Unofficial Royalty

I’m such a sucker for a good fairytale. Cinderella is still my favorite story of all time. That’s why I vividly remember the first time I saw Alexandra and Joachim of Denmark. My mother handed me the newspaper and told me to look at the picture. I saw a giggling woman wearing a tiara with a man in uniform. He held her upper arms and it looked like she was being tickled, her back arched, her head thrown back with a wide, joyful, smile. The scene struck me because it was so intimate and yet the couple was dressed in full regalia and surrounded by a crowd of onlookers. I suppose it was an accurate metaphor for the modern, royal marriage -- the couple behaving as a normal man and woman, surrounded by a world that’s anything but normal.

When I read about Alexandra and Joachim’s divorce, I thought back to that picture. Everything starts out so well and ends like this. Is the new royal romance formula not working? Were the “old ways” better, when the aristocracy married amongst itself? Can a commoner ever adapt to royal life, even if they find true love?

Of course, there are many examples of successful unions between royals and commoners – King Harald and Queen Sonja of Norway, King Gustav and Queen Silvia of Sweden but just when you think the Scandinavians have a formula that works, the Danish royal divorce happens. And, for every modern marriage that worked, there are more that didn’t – Charles and Diana, Andrew and Fergie, Ann and Mark, Naruhito and Masako of Japan. In the last case, the princess is suffering from what the Japanese royal house calls an “adjustment disorder.” The couple is still together but I can’t help but think that becoming a princess has reduced the Harvard-educated Masako to a shell of her former self.

Admittedly, England’s Edward and Sophie Wessex seem to be fine, as do Máxima and Willem of the Netherlands and Haakon and Mette Marit of Norway – so far. In those cases, the couples had long courtships and basically “lived together” before they got married. But their “trial marriages” went against the wishes of many in the royal court and, in every case, the would-be princess had to endure overwhelming scrutiny before and after their engagement. Mette Marit’s past was dragged through the mud as she was portrayed as a partier and drug addict, Máxima couldn’t have her father at her wedding because of his connection to a brutal Argentine regime and Sophie endured the humiliation of a topless photo released in the newspapers. Had they been born with blue blood, would their experience have been any different? Probably not.

It seems that the perpetuation of the Cinderella story in modern times is what causes its self-destruction. Release a picture of a new royal bride giggling in the arms of her new prince and that’s what we come to expect on a regular basis. I’m not saying that the public and the media are responsible for Denmark’s royal divorce – it sounds like Prince Joachim may have some difficult problems – but our insatiable appetite for them couldn’t have helped. As it didn’t in the cases of the other unfortunate couples I mentioned above. What do you think? Should commoners marry royals? Are we entitled to know every tidbit about a royal marriage? What do you think?

- Stephanie
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