On a cold December day in Buckingham Palace almost exactly 81 years ago, Edward the Prince of Wales, future King of England announced his abdication from the throne just a few months shy of his coronation. The reason? Falling in love with a twice-divorced American.
Fast forward four generations later, as the ‘will he or won’t he put a ring on it’ courtship of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle culminates in an ultimate media hysteria not untypical of royal weddings, celebrity babies and passengers getting dragged off airplanes, their engagement sparks a global conversation around mixed race couples and the monarchy’s established opposition against remarriage after divorce.
Meghan Markle, or as the English speaking world knows her, “the hot one” from US legal drama Suits, seems to be the one girl that checks off every criteria on the monarchy’s “Abdicate If You Date” list. Along with her role as a TV actress, Markle is divorced, not White, not British, half-Jewish and nowhere in the same stratosphere of aristocrats the British sovereigns are used to marrying their offspring to.
As the world celebrates the monarchy embracing the “refreshingly modern” romance and how the couple represents the changing future, we forget that interracial couples and remarriage after divorce is not uncommon and hasn’t been for a long time. In fact, interracial couples and marriage after a divorce has long been present in recent history.
In the United Kingdom, mainstream Christianity was pretty much founded on divorce when Henry VIII split from the Catholic Church to head the Church of England just so he could legitimize his divorce from Catherine of Aragon and remarriage to Anne Boleyn.
If you thought you read that wrong, you didn’t. The Church of England, purveyor of mainstream Christianity, the institution the monarchy declares allegiance in absolution to, was formed by a man who couldn’t keep his pants on and wanted a religious institution to simply sign off on his latest romantic whim.
The resulting irony of the British monarchy to have been mired in several controversies involving remarriage after divorce is palpable. For an institution that is founded on tradition and made remarkable by how unremarkably they stick to that tradition, the monarchy ‘embracing change’ and ‘adapting to the times’ and other phrases Barack Obama would be happy to endorse, is completely irrelevant. Celebrating the British royalty’s changing attitudes towards marriage after divorce and interracial marriages in 2017 is equivalent to going up to a 25 year old and congratulating them on learning to walk.
It’s just too little too late.
As Britain grows increasingly racially diverse, interracial couples are no longer a dime a dozen. With interracial celebrity couples making history like John & Yoko, David Bowie & Iman, and even in high society where Emma McQuiston, the daughter of a Nigerian oil tycoon became the first black aristocrat in 2013, latest census figures state that mixed race couples account for 10% of all relationships in the UK.
Just like congratulating adults on their ability to walk, the world’s most conservative institution validating ‘unconventional’ marriage attributes in 2017 no less, demonstrates further how little and belated this endorsement means to the UK, and the rest of the world.
Across the Atlantic, in Loving v. Virginia (1967), the United States effectively ruled that couples were free to marry outside their race. That makes fifty years of interracial marriages for Britain’s largest former colony. At home, in a nationally representative survey conducted by Milieu, 72% of Singaporeans polled would date outside their race, religion or nationality.
As we constantly view royalty through glossy magazine exclusives and gilded palace walls, we tend to hold them in higher regard, using the monarchy as an ideal that society should strive towards. However, we forget how much power we wield over the monarchy and how in actuality, the monarchy doesn’t stay true to absolute tradition but instead reflects the changing sentiment of the public.
We forget the countless monarchies the people have exiled, executed and abolished, due to their lack of reform and reckless abandonment of popular opinion. We see them plastered all over our magnets and newspapers for too long so we assume that we’re the only ones watching. We forget that they too watch us, celebrating marriage in all its forms and divorce in all its tragic brokenness.
So when we celebrate Prince Harry’s engagement, we’re celebrating that it took 50 years for antiquated traditionalists to finally reflect the changes in public attitudes towards marriage, divorce and race. We’re celebrating that it took an abdication and several scandals for the monarchy to eventually condone marriage in its entirety without restriction. And when we do, we enable a new generation of sovereigns to take another 50 years to reflect the changes we want to see today. We’re encouraging the monarchy to prioritise protecting tradition over an accurate reflection of the progress we have struggled so long to achieve today.
Why We Shouldn't Be Celebrating Prince Harry's Engagement
On a cold December day in Buckingham Palace almost exactly 81 years ago, Edward the Prince of Wales, future King of England announced his abdication from the throne just a few months shy of his coronation. The reason? Falling in love with a twice-divorced American.
Fast forward four generations later, as the ‘will he or won’t he put a ring on it’ courtship of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle culminates in an ultimate media hysteria not untypical of royal weddings, celebrity babies and passengers getting dragged off airplanes, their engagement sparks a global conversation around mixed race couples and the monarchy’s established opposition against remarriage after divorce.
Meghan Markle, or as the English speaking world knows her, “the hot one” from US legal drama Suits, seems to be the one girl that checks off every criteria on the monarchy’s “Abdicate If You Date” list. Along with her role as a TV actress, Markle is divorced, not White, not British, half-Jewish and nowhere in the same stratosphere of aristocrats the British sovereigns are used to marrying their offspring to.
As the world celebrates the monarchy embracing the “refreshingly modern” romance and how the couple represents the changing future, we forget that interracial couples and remarriage after divorce is not uncommon and hasn’t been for a long time. In fact, interracial couples and marriage after a divorce has long been present in recent history.
In the United Kingdom, mainstream Christianity was pretty much founded on divorce when Henry VIII split from the Catholic Church to head the Church of England just so he could legitimize his divorce from Catherine of Aragon and remarriage to Anne Boleyn.
If you thought you read that wrong, you didn’t. The Church of England, purveyor of mainstream Christianity, the institution the monarchy declares allegiance in absolution to, was formed by a man who couldn’t keep his pants on and wanted a religious institution to simply sign off on his latest romantic whim.
The resulting irony of the British monarchy to have been mired in several controversies involving remarriage after divorce is palpable. For an institution that is founded on tradition and made remarkable by how unremarkably they stick to that tradition, the monarchy ‘embracing change’ and ‘adapting to the times’ and other phrases Barack Obama would be happy to endorse, is completely irrelevant. Celebrating the British royalty’s changing attitudes towards marriage after divorce and interracial marriages in 2017 is equivalent to going up to a 25 year old and congratulating them on learning to walk.
It’s just too little too late.
As Britain grows increasingly racially diverse, interracial couples are no longer a dime a dozen. With interracial celebrity couples making history like John & Yoko, David Bowie & Iman, and even in high society where Emma McQuiston, the daughter of a Nigerian oil tycoon became the first black aristocrat in 2013, latest census figures state that mixed race couples account for 10% of all relationships in the UK.
Just like congratulating adults on their ability to walk, the world’s most conservative institution validating ‘unconventional’ marriage attributes in 2017 no less, demonstrates further how little and belated this endorsement means to the UK, and the rest of the world.
Across the Atlantic, in Loving v. Virginia (1967), the United States effectively ruled that couples were free to marry outside their race. That makes fifty years of interracial marriages for Britain’s largest former colony. At home, in a nationally representative survey conducted by Milieu, 72% of Singaporeans polled would date outside their race, religion or nationality.
As we constantly view royalty through glossy magazine exclusives and gilded palace walls, we tend to hold them in higher regard, using the monarchy as an ideal that society should strive towards. However, we forget how much power we wield over the monarchy and how in actuality, the monarchy doesn’t stay true to absolute tradition but instead reflects the changing sentiment of the public.
We forget the countless monarchies the people have exiled, executed and abolished, due to their lack of reform and reckless abandonment of popular opinion. We see them plastered all over our magnets and newspapers for too long so we assume that we’re the only ones watching. We forget that they too watch us, celebrating marriage in all its forms and divorce in all its tragic brokenness.
So when we celebrate Prince Harry’s engagement, we’re celebrating that it took 50 years for antiquated traditionalists to finally reflect the changes in public attitudes towards marriage, divorce and race. We’re celebrating that it took an abdication and several scandals for the monarchy to eventually condone marriage in its entirety without restriction. And when we do, we enable a new generation of sovereigns to take another 50 years to reflect the changes we want to see today. We’re encouraging the monarchy to prioritise protecting tradition over an accurate reflection of the progress we have struggled so long to achieve today.
