Count me among the abstainers. I won't be watching over-the-top media coverage of Friday's wedding between Prince William and the "commoner," Kate Middleton.
After the "wedding of the century" of William's mother and father in 1981 and the ensuing drama that led to their divorce in 1996 and, eventually, her death on Aug. 31, 1997, the wedding of their son is unlikely to match the earlier nuptials in pomp or circumstance.
Pete Broadbent, the bishop of Willesden in northwest London, demonstrated just how cynical we have become about these fairy tale weddings. Last November, the bishop compared the couple to "shallow celebrities."
He said their marriage is bound to fail. "I give the marriage seven years," he wrote on his Facebook page. But he wasn't through. He went on to trash Prince Charles and Princess Diana, saying of the media coverage of their wedding, "I managed to avoid the last disaster in slow motion between Big Ears and the Porcelain Doll, and I hope to avoid this one too."
The bishop, an anti-monarchist, cited a history of "more broken marriages and philanderers among these [royals] than not. They cost us an arm and a leg. ... Talent isn't passed on through people's bloodstock. The hereditary principle is corrupt and sexist." I don't go ga-ga over royal weddings, and I'll probably miss this one -- I didn't get an invitation and I'll probably be washing my beard that day. (I don't have much hair left...) But I do have to take issue with his statement that "talent isn't passed on through people's bloodstock." There's lots of evidence to refute that didactic statement of the counter-intuitive. Intelligence (or the lack thereof) can be passed from parent to offspring in precisely the same manner as hemophilia, buck teeth, or red hair. We breed little white mousies all the time for this trait or that, to include the ability to think their way to the most direct route to the cheese.
To whit: Note that the prospective groom resembles his late mother in the face, while his brother got her hair and her complexion. Neither, thankfully, has their father's ears, and hopefully neither has his brain power.
Way back when, Henry VIII was begotten by Henry VII, who was no dummy, and Henry VIII begat the first Elizabeth who eclipsed the pair of them, both for intellect and for ruthlessness. When she pegged out she left the throne to James VI of Scotland, who as James I of England introduced the gene for dumbassery into the line. He got that from his mother, Mary, Queen of Scots. God knows where she got it, but it probably wasn't from Robert the Bruce.
James had a liking for funny hats and practical jokes and a firm belief in the divine right of kings. His son, Charles I had the same belief and as a result got his head chopped off and gave Oliver Cromwell his place in history. Charles II was the original "Good Times Charlie," fathering a dozen illegitimate children, most of whom got government jobs. James II was a divine right disaster.
While there have been kings and queens since then who've been well loved, like Queen Victoria and George V, none have been towering intellects.
Princess Di was a breath of fresh air for the royal family simply because her antecedents weren't picked from the stud book. Miss Middleton takes that a step further: her Mom was a stewardess and her Dad a flight dispatcher. They run a successful mail order company, implying they've got some business sense to them, which the royals demonstrably don't.
My guess is that given a few generations of out-breeding the British royals might become something more than a relic of days gone by. Whether they recapture the glory days of William I is another story. But a few throwbacks to the Plantagenets would probably scare the knickers off the current crop of Brits anyway. |
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