I remember watching the last Royal Wedding on television (well, bits of it) in April 2011. To be honest, I was surprised at how moved I was.

There is something heroic about that promise, “Until Death us do Part.” Especially so, when the two people making it have actually chosen each other.

After all, in the past, many royal weddings took place between people who were not much more than pieces on someone else’s chess board.

In 1922 my grandmother went to see the procession for the wedding of the Queen’s aunt to Viscount Lascelles. She came home, shocked, and told her sister that the young princess’s eyes were red with crying. Princess Mary was 24, her bridegroom 39. He looks grim in the wedding photograph. Continue reading →