There’s no guarantee of a happy ending for today’s Cinderellas.
“I do” – the voice of the spouses, William, Duke of Cambridge, and Catherine Middleton, known as Kate, echoed through Westminster Abbey in London on 29 April 2011, crowning their love story with a worldwide event broadcast by every form of media, from TV to Internet – including the Windsor’s YouTube channel.
Estimates speak of a television audience of two billion people, over twice the 750 million who in July 1981 witnessed the wedding between Charles, Prince of Wales and Lady Diana Spencer on television.
The union between Prince William, second in line to the British throne, and the ‘commoner’ Kate is a true love story, unlike the wedding between Diana and Carlo, which was part of a court strategy.
Until recently dynastic weddings were more often used to seal an alliance between powerful families or to ensure succession. It was more like a signature on a contract that the crowning of a passion.
The admission of love – of ‘real’ feeling – was part of what turned the 20th Century European courts on their heads. Carefully studied arranged marriages, too often between blood relations with all their genetic frailties, gave way to unions decided by the heart: real, passionate, brave love affairs that defy time and, being real, can end in tears.
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There’s no guarantee of a happy ending for today’s Cinderellas.
“I do” – the voice of the spouses, William, Duke of Cambridge, and Catherine Middleton, known as Kate, echoed through Westminster Abbey in London on 29 April 2011, crowning their love story with a worldwide event broadcast by every form of media, from TV to Internet – including the Windsor’s YouTube channel.
