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April 09, 2005

Mazel tov

All the best to Charles and Camilla.

I wish these two people every happiness. Imagine waiting 30 years to marry someone you love because of a caste system.

Monarchy is dehumanizing and should be abolished.

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Ah, the pearls of wisdom to be picked up here! So glad I stopped by, after 3 months....

Actually they could have married whenever they liked but it would have meant Charles giving up his lavish lifestyle paid for by the British taxpayers.
It is their own greed and arrogance that dehumanises these people. Fuck them.

I'm glad you wrote this. I have no love for any royal family, but the whole thing rested on the insane dictate that the future sovereign's bride be certifiably virgin.

Charles paddles about trying to grow up and learn stuff. Camilla wants to live her life, OMG. Charles eventually decides to do what's been expected of him from the day he was born. Alas, Camilla's already known the poke of an unkingly dick. Ve must haff a virgin.

Poor dumb Diana. She didn't understand that she was supposed to pop out the heirs while quietly finding her own happiness. She thought they were supposed to be in love.

So yeah, it's late in the day, but it's still all right to see these two lovers, both in late middle-age, be able to live together as husband and wife without being exiled or excommunicated or whatever.

(BTW - I expect Camilla's own money and divorce settlement could have allowed them to live a pleasant life even without Charles's inherited wealth.)

Well, I think maybe the fact that she's Catholic and (absent some special dispensation, I think) not eligible to be the wife of the head of the faith might've had something to do with it too.

Except, julia, doesn't it sound like no one has the slightest idea of what's to be done with Camilla? Who knows what she is or is not eligible for. First it was going to be okay because she'd only be Princess of Not-Wales, and she'd never be queen, only consort. Then it appears that like it or not, if Charles becomes King, Camilla becomes Queen, except maybe that's not so....

“For what do we live but to make sport for our neighbors and laugh at them in turn?” - Mr. Bennett in Jane Austen’s "Pride and Prejudice".

QE II to Prince Chuck the Dull: "I'm ever so sorry dear, but you are absolutely forbidden from marrying that girl. Her family is insufficiently inbred. After all, if she isn't good enough for her cousin, she isn't good enough for us. Even if we really are upstart Germans.

Yep, this is the best "royal" wedding in ages. Now if all the media could just ignore it, we'd be set.

I believe it wasn't so much the caste system as that Camilla was already married keeping them apart (not physically by all accounts). I don't find 30 years of adultery particularly romantic. I don't think marrying Diana under the circumstances was admirable either. These people are despicable, in my opinion, and I think they have gotten pretty much what they deserve. Their ultimate marriage does not sanitize past dishonesty. If he loved Camilla so much he could have abdicated, but he hadn't the spine.

Camilla wasn't married when they started their relationship. Additionally, they are raised with a sense of obligation and duty that I doubt any of us would understand (I'm not sure that Edward's abdication was all about his love for Wallis Simpson; the pro-Nazi politics of the couple were quite disconcerting to those in the know and I wouldn't be surprised if he was strongly encouraged to abdicate officially for "the love of a woman" which helped keep his politics out of the forefront for many years).

The late Prince Rainier was very much in love with a woman that he was not allowed to marry because Royal doctors said she was barren. He married Grace Kelly not for love but for the Kelly money, the prestige and financially security her name would bring to Monaco and the heirs she would produce (the women he loved did marry and had children - oops - too late). Without a male heir, Monaco ceases to be independent. Rainier's sense of obligation not only brought Monaco financial stability, but provides independence at least until Albert's death. Was his decision spinelessness or a sense of obligation?

Rebecca Gratz is considered a heroine among Jews. She was a devout Jew who fell very much in love with a Gentile and never married him because he was not Jewish (she never married at all, but she did not have an obligation to provide a family heir as Prince Charles did). Does the fact that she never married the man she loved over a religious difference mean she had no spine?

It's very easy for us to stand in judgement without understanding the way they are raised. Royalty have an awful lot of great things we couldn't imagine and they have them solely due to birth, but many of them are not really allowed to make their own decisions about things like career and marriage because those things are still left as decisions for others to make/approve because they were also born into responsibilities/obligations we can't begin to understand.

I hardly consider their relationship to have been adulterous, since his marriage to Diana was a sham in the first place.

Well, to be fair (and I think in many ways his dishonesty in that case paid for itself over time, and he does seem to be doing a pretty good job with the boys) I very much doubt he brought up the fact that he wasn't prepared to be faithful when he proposed to a seventeen-year-old virgin.

This is off-topic, but my bullshit detector is going nuts. Regarding your sidebar...if "Arran's Alley" is a philosophy blog, then I'm a crazy horse.

"Monarchy is dehumanizing and should be abolished."

That's why they don't have humans doing it these days. Don't waste your sympathy on a man who has a servant to put the toothpaste on his toothbrush (not making that up).

I used to despise royalty as worthless pampered elitists. They really don't have a choice though. Like someone born into a cult, they are indoctrinated from birth, never able to think like a normal human. Now, I pity them as I pity zoo animals. Zoo animals also have servants to do everything for them.

I am English and have no love of the monarchy. I have little time for Brenda or the rest her rotten crew; particularly that dullard, wet heir Brian. (Though his estates do make nice sausages, I'll concede.)

HOWEVER, this interest in Brian and his new bride is unseemly. It is none of my business and it's none of yours either. I suggest we walk away and ignore their private lives.

Move along, now. Nothing to see here...

To Chris,
I love you. I have never heard it put quite that way. Great analogy.
Anyway, to the English chick (Njori)--
You have confirmed my suspicions of the English being just a tad too uptight (That is a good-natured joke I promise).
The monarchy has very little control over the actual government in the UK. The monarchy is essentially dead.
The fortune and life styles of the monarchy, along with the legacy is something that the public eye chooses not to ignore. Look at how historical a couple like Charles and Di was! Charles cared so much about his image in the public eye that he hid his secret life for years, and cast aside a woman who really loved him.
If we should just walk away and ignore these people, then maybe they shouldn't gloat their capitalistic empire and get their asses out in the real world and be real human beings. Like Diana and her son, who went off to Africa to help the poor.
That got the public eye off them very quickly (although short-lived).

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