An unemployed man named Harry has announced that he is going to marry a 36 year old woman named Meghan. So what ?
Well, the man happens to be a member of a very rich family and his mother is probably the most famous woman in the world. The woman is an American divorcée who is a very minor film and television actress; she is a Catholic of mixed race and from a fairly well-off Hollywood family. The woman is also one of those 'rich kids' who has an assortment of supposedly humanitarian roles with various organisations.
Henry Charles Albert David, otherwise known as Prince Harry, seems to be an amiable chap who had a successful career in the army before giving that up to become ------ ? As the younger son of the heir to the throne he is in a similar situation to that of his uncle, Prince Andrew, who has never quite appeared to have a clear role to play. Andrew also had a military career and then married someone who was not the usual type to become a royal princess.
Rachel Meghan Markle is, according to some genealogical research reported by 'Wikipedia', descended from some 16th English Baron and also from King John. On her mother's side, she is apparently descended from slaves and her overall ancestry is a mixture from several countries. However, given the propensity for Americans to grab hold of the first vague indication of anything genealogically interesting, I'd need a bit of convincing before I believed any of it.
Prince Harry's ancestry is similarly mixed and he is, of course, definitely descended from King John as are all of the modern day Royal Family; other than questions about paternity, the genealogy of the Royal Family is well known going back to William the Conqueror and even earlier. Harry is, for instance, also a descendant of King Alfred the Great, though not of King Richard, King Henry VIII or King Charles II, unless through illegitimate routes.
A little over 80 years ago, another proposed Royal marriage between a British prince and an American divorcée led to a constitutional crisis and an abdication; the Queen owes her place on the throne today to this. Prince Harry's proposed marriage is not likely to result in any such problems and has been welcomed by the establishments of both countries. Of course, neither he nor any offspring of his marriage are likely to ever ascend to the throne rendering his marriage a bit of a non-event in constitutional terms.
Nonetheless, it is interesting to note the distance travelled by the Royal Family over the last 100 years or so. From not even contemplating the possibility of a marriage outside of other royalty or, at least, nobility, and no possibility of divorce, we now have a raft of divorced Princes, Princesses and others, and marriages to all and sundry, divorced or not.
Is this progress or is it just the Royal Family joining in with the general descent into decadence that afflicts the rest of our society, in which money and celebrity is all that matters ?
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