The recent British royal wedding left me wondering what it was all about. One million people were said to have gathered on the streets of London for the occasion, and media coverage is estimated to have reached some two billion worldwide. Normally I’d be happy with a bemused shrug: ‘has the whole world gone mad?’ (Especially when I realized the staff in my local optician’s in Dublin had come to work dressed as if going to a wedding, to watch the proceedings live online). But massive state-sponsored pageantry can’t be brushed aside so easily, and the impending state visit by Queen Elizabeth to Ireland prompts me to pay it some attention.
It seems to me that we might take four possible views, not all of which are entirely independent of one another. The monarchy and all it entails could be seen as a matter of abstract constitutionalism; as an offshoot of modern celebrity culture; as a focus of political legitimation within Britain; as an immediately recognizable global brand.