Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2021 March 8

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March 8

Why do Americans care so much about the British royals?

Quite a significant amount of Americans seem to follow to one extent or another the developments surrounding the British royal family while the news media covers major events surrounding them on a scale unlike the coverage of any other royal families of Europe. There are still more than a handful of ruling royal families in the world. Why the singular focus on the British royals in the United States? StellarHalo (talk) 04:23, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

Well, it was specifically the British Crown against which the patriots rebelled. And they have the same language (more or less), and a lot of American culture comes from the UK originally. See Special Relationship for more. Still, in the end, I share your confusion; I don't think there's any very good reason. --Trovatore (talk) 05:45, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

The UK as a country may be going down the gurgler on a weekly basis, but the British Royal Family is a focus of everlasting interest to people all over the world, and has been for a very long time. It's not just the USA that follows their doings. The real question is, why would anyone apart from the British have any interest in a bunch of folks who inherited their positions and have no say in how anything of consequence is done, including much of their own lives. This is also true of the Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Spanish, Dutch yada yada Royal Families, but a lot of folks who follow the British Royals are barely aware that these other Royal Families even exist. Whence the huge disparity in interest? It must surely have a lot to do with the fact that just about every country that has English as its official or dominant language has at one time been a British possession, and colonial memories are very long. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 08:21, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

• I'd just like to note that for quite a number of those countries, including Jack's and mine, the British royal family is also their own royal family; but of course this is not the case for the USA. --142.112.149.107 (talk) 00:32, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

What might be another factor is that the British have very active tabloid journalism. The British tabloids do the hard work, making it easier for people in other counties to follow the British royals. Royals on other countries don't attract really much attention even in their own country. PiusImpavidus (talk) 09:41, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

JackofOz -- In the post-WW2 period, the Benelux and Scandinavian monarchies became known as "bicycle" monarchies (we actually have an article Bicycle monarchy), and those surrounding the British royal family were determined not to go down the "bicycle" route. At that time there was no Spanish monarchy... AnonMoos (talk) 23:56, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

Maybe because it's really, really hard to find any other royals who are native English speakers? DOR (HK) (talk) 15:09, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

Grace Kelly spoke passable English. --Jayron32 16:01, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

I'm sure Queen Noor of Jordan was a native speaker. If we're just talking about a good level of English, I assume some of the Middle East ones have good, sometimes even close to native English, as they did their tertiary and maybe even secondary or even primary education in some part of the anglophone world or at least an English medium school. E.g. Princess Haya bint Hussein. A number of the Malaysian ones too e.g. Tengku Amir Shah or Nazrin Shah of Perak. (As evidenced in one of those articles, it isn't uncommon for them to marry non Malaysians who are either native speakers, or at least have good English e.g. [1], although I'll give you that their spouses tend to have low profiles after marriage. There's the infamous case of Jacqueline Pascarl, although Raja Kamarul Bahrin being a part of the royal family is more of an aside.)

BTW, I think a number of these examples and others e.g. Latifa bint Mohammed Al Maktoum, to demonstrate a connection to PiusImpavidus's point above. In the Middle East and Asian royalties, criticism of the royal families is a lot more restricted. While this only applies internally, it makes it harder for scandal and coverage to radiate outwards. People tend to be a lot more interested in claims someone asked how dark a child is going to be than they are in the wondrous charity work or whatever. Consider the case of Iskandar of Johor and the 1993 amendments to the Constitution of Malaysia#Gomez Incident, where the assaults were only publicised in Malaysia when the government tactically allowed it. And this was probably more because it was politically convenient as it helped them, Mahathir bin Mohamed really, in a power struggle rather than because they were horrified over what had been done.

(And there are persistent rumours of far worse e.g. [2] [3] and some simply not published in an RS. The nature of Malaysian politics means to this day it's impossible to be sure these are true, even though the veracity of a lot of this should be far easier to determine than what Prince Andrew may have done. Of course that also has the flipside that these rumours may very well be completely false, but many people don't believe any denials. Such things aren't restricted to members of the royal families of course, I've heard some nasty stuff about politicians or actually I think it was one their children, and I'm not referring to the Murder of Shaariibuugiin Altantuyaa.)

Taking this back on topic, when this coverage does make it to America, there's probably some degree or "otherness" or "that's what it's like there" reducing the interest. And I think the Sultan assaulted someone (let alone the rumour he beat someone to death for laughing at a poor golf shot) or the princess was kidnapped back to Dubai and is now being held against her will, is also the sort of story that's too nasty to be serve most people's prurient interest, compared to something like my earlier example of asking how dark a child is going to be.

Nil Einne (talk) 17:22, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

Among other things (mentioned above), they're among the very wealthiest people on the planet, even if their ability to access it is very restricted. Actually, the American fascination with the royal family reminds me of atheism, in the sense that there any many atheists who are specifically atheistic about a particular religion, since it formed their cultural background. That lack of connection has a different tone than that for other religions for which no connection ever existed. Among "converted" atheists, there's a religion they're separating from - and so it is with Americans and the British royals. Matt Deres (talk) 16:31, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

That substitute religion could be called Anglophilia. <-Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots-> 17:03, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

Why do Americans care so much about the British royals? For the same reason that freak shows always get a sizeable audience. Articles about a bunch of ultra-privileged inbred nincompoops always go down well with the forelock-tuggers. It's not just the USA: the French lapped up the tragic tale of Didi et Dodi. MinorProphet (talk) 17:34, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

I agree with JackofOz's sentence "It's not just the USA that follows their doings." I didn't look for references to back this up, but my impression from consuming European non-English-language media indicates that it's definitely not just the United States media who report an awful lot about the British Royals (when compared to other monarchical families, and when compared to what I find relevant, personally). ---Sluzzelin talk 20:09, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

Unless there's been a recent boom I'm unaware of, we don't. The US press spends very little time covering them. Temerarius (talk) 06:23, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

Have you been watching the US brodcast TV network morning shows in the past week or two? AnonMoos (talk) 06:29, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

Americans have been without a "royal family" since the Kennedys no longer regularly appear on red carpets. The Kardashian freakshow is a somewhat inadequate substitute. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 11:30, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

Based on comparisons to the standard level of drama in the British Royal Family, I would say the Kardashian freakshow and the Windsor freakshow are rather equivalent, excpeting the Kardashian freakshow is less scary given that it doesn't have constitutional powers it could screw everything up with. --Jayron32 15:14, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

Most of the criticism seems to have been levelled at the civil servants who support the Royal Family; there have been no accusations against the Queen and the Prince of Wales has been accused of not answering the telephone, so I don't see any constitutional issues. Alansplodge (talk) 15:36, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

Royal prerogative in the United Kingdom would tend to disagree with you; while most of the Queen's power is in practice not exercised, it is real power. The UK constitution operates mostly under the "Well, we could, but we just don't" theory of governance. My point is that while the Kardashian drama is pure entertainment, the Windsors have real (if currently not being used) constitutional power. --Jayron32 15:48, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

Although arguably the that lack of exercising of power is due to the "Well, we could, but we just wont (for the time being)" policy of beheading, expelling, or forcing to abdicate monarchs who overstep the mark. Iapetus (talk) 16:18, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

My point was that this latest farrago involves the Queen not one jot. The squabbles of the extended family are not a constitutional issue, unless it gets to the point where the whole edifice is undermined. We're a long way from that. Alansplodge (talk) 19:23, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

Fair enough. --Jayron32 19:29, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

In this context, a better term than "policy" is "time-honoured tradition".  --Lambiam 00:20, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

The squabbles of the extended family are not a constitutional issue, unless it gets to the point where the whole edifice is undermined. We're a long way from that. No, the point has already been reached. We would have reached it before but for the fact that Her Majesty, who did not attend her son's 2005 ceremony, blocked legislation to legalise it (royals cannot marry in register offices). This has been the law since the introduction of civil marriage in 1837 and for good reason - we don't want our kings and queens to marry people of the same sex in people's back gardens as proposed by the Law Commission [4] (see page 6 for confirmation that the ban in the 1836 Act remains in force).

The Church has taken action by convening a Zoom conference commencing 10 am London time on Saturday, 20 March to discuss the matter. Law professors who have written papers explaining why the 2005 ceremony was illegal, including a Law Commissioner, will be on hand. Anyone can attend, but if you are not a member of the Ecclesiastical Law Society there is a five pounds attendance fee. The booking form is at [5]. 95.149.135.255 (talk) 11:45, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

One of the issues the conference will be exploring is "the legalities of marrying in accordance with the rites of the Church of England today whether by banns or licence." This is topical following Meghan's revelation on Sunday that the Archbishop of Canterbury conducted a private ceremony before the official one. Lawyers who claimed the first ceremony did not create a marriage because no witnesses were present are wrong.

In their judgment in Akhter v Khan (2020) the Court of Appeal stated (paragraph 33):

The statutory regulation of marriage started with the Clandestine Marriages Act 1753, known as Lord Hardwicke's Act. There is some debate about the extent of the problem but the long title An Act for the Better Preventing of Clandestine Marriage, makes clear the Act's purpose. It was intended to "put an end to clandestine and irregular marriages", Rayden on Divorce 2^nd Ed., 1926 at p. 36, paragraph 13 n (a). A clandestine marriage was a marriage conducted by a Church of England priest without any other formality and which, because of the lack of formality and its secret nature, meant that it was difficult to establish whether someone was or was not validly married.

The 1753 Act expressly stated that its restrictions did not apply to the royal family. Professor Rebecca Probert, who will open the conference, notes in The presumptions in favour of marriage (2018) 77CLJ 375:

Before 1754, entry into marriage was governed by the canon law. Its stipulations were for the most part merely directory, the only essential requirements being that the parties had freely consented to marry each other before an Anglican clergyman. It was thus entirely plausible that a marriage might have taken place without any formal record being made...

At the same time, there was little need for any presumption that the ceremony had been properly performed, since a marriage celebrated without banns or licence, at the wrong time of day, and not in any church would still be valid as long as the person solemnising it was authorised to do so. But after 25 March 1754, certain formalities became essential to the validity of any marriage (save those celebrated by special licence, according to the usages of Jews or Quakers, or involving members of the royal family).

So when Harry and Meghan walked into St George's Chapel, Windsor for their wedding they were already married. This is the exact opposite of what happened in 2005. Camilla and Charles' wedding ceremony at Windsor register office was play-acting as far as the law is concerned and had no legal consequences. When they walked across the road to the chapel for the ceremony conducted by the Archbishop of Canterbury they weren't married. During the service there was no expression of consent and the Archbishop did not pronounce them man and wife. So when they walked out they still weren't married. 89.240.118.119 (talk) 12:05, 12 March 2021 (UTC)