{Why Royal Weddings Matter} No. 1: The Real Fairy Tale

In celebration of the upcoming royal wedding, I’ve just begun a limited-edition weekly column, “Why Royal Weddings Matter,” on Confluence Daily, an online magazine especially for women. 
The first post, “The Real Fairy Tale,” has excerpted bits from both The End of the Fairy-Tale Bride (available on Amazon) and my book in progress, A Memory of Beauty: The Spiritual Mission of a Princess. 
I've reprinted the article below with some yummy wedding photos. Enjoy!

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The Real Fairy Tale

With splendid pageantry and elegant costumes, royal weddings bring up “fairy-tale” dreams of love and romance. “Fairy,” an English word, comes from the French fée, which came from the Latin fatare, “to enchant.” No wonder royal weddings and “enchantment” go hand-in-hand—especially when there is an engaging tug-of-the-heart story with the charms of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.

Following in his brother Prince William’s footsteps, Harry not only will marry the woman he loves this spring, but his spiritual partner as well. Only a generation before—in the arranged marriage code-of-conduct royal world—such a “love first, duty second, woman with a past” arrangement for any heir to the British throne would have been, if not impossible, certainly one with consequences.

William and Harry’s parents’ wedding in 1981 stirred the hope of “fairy tale” and yet, as Diana and Charles’ marriage played out, any notion of “happily ever after” soon vanished. Theirs was an arranged marriage that pretended it was not. Although times were changing when they married, the social culture had not shifted enough to allow Prince Charles to follow his true feelings. Perhaps even more consequential, the Windsor family was shadowed by kinsman King Edward VIII who in 1936, with some political pressures, gave up the throne “for the woman he loved.” The scandal was a little too close in historical proximity for Charles to make a similar decision about marrying someone for love who didn’t fit the “queenly model.”

Nonetheless, almost seven decades after King Edward’s abdication, cultural changes were on Prince Charles’ side—thanks in great part, ironically, to his late wife insisting on bringing more heart into the royal family. In 2005, 24 years after his marriage of “dynastic duty” to Diana, Charles did not have to give up the throne nor start a palace revolt, yet, with his queen’s blessing, he indeed married the woman who had been his longtime friend and confidante—the woman he had long loved.

In this more modern and egalitarian grand gesture, Charles and Camilla’s marriage put the seal on “love over duty,” supporting Edward’s heartful claim that “he could be a better king with the woman he loved at his side.” With such a legacy, when it was time for Charles’ sons to marry, they fell in love with women who matched their vision and compassion—beautiful “commoners” with “backgrounds” no less!

So call royal weddings “fairy tales” if you must, but the conscious connection that both Princes William and Harry have made in their marriage choices is simply what I call the way life is meant to be when heads are clear and hearts are strong. Whether king or prince or commoner, “what your heart thinks is great, is great,” poet Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote. “The soul’s emphasis is always right.” ~ 

{The Woman I Love} -part three-

We're completing the final part of “The Woman I Love” (excerpt from my book in progress)...and featuring a bit of Prince Harry's family legacy. 

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 The Woman I Love

{part three of three*}

Was Diana’s real “duty” as princess—the underlying essence of her life mission—to show how there is always a place for love and that being heart-centered can only strengthen and give pleasure to one’s sense of “duty”? Was part of her monarchic purpose to bring the shadowy emotional inheritance from King Edward into the light, even revealing an intriguing connection to her and the conspiratorial theories about how he was maneuvered from the throne? “In the abdication crisis of Edward VIII,” Jungian analyst Ian Alister asserts in When a Princess Dies, “there was a conflict between the steady, reliable—what I call ‘thinking’—qualities required by the collective institution of monarchy and the more unpredictable personal qualities—which I characterize as ‘feeling qualities’—represented by the individual. Edward favoured feeling (Wallis Simpson) ahead of thought (his kingly duty). I suggest that Diana re-awoke this conflict in the House of Windsor.”

Indeed, Diana awoke a ‘relationship of the heart’ revolution in the House of Windsor! Diana’s was a revolution that was to reveal how one does not have to sacrifice personal happiness for the privilege of doing one’s duty.

Ironically Charles and Camilla’s marriage called on this “feeling,” heart-centered energy that King Edward stirred up and then which Diana broke open in British culture—in the monarchy on down. Several years after Charles and Camilla married, former BBC royal correspondent Jennie Bond commented about the Duchess of Cornwall in the Telegraph: “She’s trodden carefully and turned the public around with her charm and sense of humour. I like her an awful lot.”

Bond also recalled a conversation she’d had with Princess Diana: “Diana once told me that Camilla had always been the love of Charles’ life and that she’d been ‘very loyal and very discreet.’” I was happy to read that for several reasons and, if accurate, it was the first I read of Diana acknowledging to someone—in what seemed a mature, thoughtful way—what she truly felt in her heart about Camilla, and without rancor toward her husband. Here was a moment when Diana’s strong “feeling” nature came into balance with a more thoughtful “thinking” nature. (Is this, a reoccurring task we all have, perhaps the essential “life lesson” of the ages?)

Diana indeed carried the mantle for “bringing your heart” along into all situations of life. And perhaps we’re still learning for ourselves what she was only beginning to realize at the end of her life: To trust the intelligence of our heart more than the emotions of our mind and that our body is wiser than our head. So in that sense, “bring your heart” is to bring both love and wisdom.

We see the unhappy results in our own lives when we don’t “bring our heart”—only relying on thoughts and reason and wayward emotions. We see the harsh results in today’s society when politicians, business leaders, or even next-door neighbors don’t “bring their heart” with them in making decisions that affect all of us. It’s not easy for anyone—king or commoner—to simply “be ourselves” in a world bent on winning at all costs, that puts profit ahead of people’s well-being, and appearance above happiness. But then why are we still so fascinated with the story of King Edward and Mrs. Simpson or the life of Princess Diana—or her charming sons who both married for love—if we indeed aren’t yearning to be our authentic self, if we aren’t truly yearning to “bring our heart” with us no matter the bent of the world?

Diana didn't get there herself, but it seems her former husband and both of their sons "bring their heart" into a vibrant life of service and devotion to their beloveds. All three "married for love" and the monarchy still stands. ~

{*Final part of "The Woman I Love"....excerpt from my book in progress, tentatively titled, A Memory of Love: The Spiritual Mission of a Princess.}

{The Woman I Love} -part two-

Continuing our "month of love" celebration (and upcoming marriage of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle) with the second part of “The Woman I Love” (excerpt from my book in progress)...and featuring a number of Windsors!

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The Woman I Love

{part two of three*}

Clearly “love isn’t everything” nor is “doing one’s duty” without the potential of deep satisfaction. There’s not simply one prescription for happiness. It’s just darn hard to follow one’s heart, however, in extreme patriarchal conditions!

Nonetheless, change always happens. Almost seven decades after King Edward’s abdication, a change in social culture was on Charles’ side (thanks in great part to the work of his late wife.) In 2005, 24 years after his marriage of “duty,” Charles did not have to give up the throne (although there were restrictive provisions), nor start a palace revolution nor send anyone to the guillotine, yet he indeed married the woman who had been his longtime friend and confidante—the woman he had long loved—Camilla Shand Parker Bowles; now Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall. And they are a couple who seem to simply fit so well together. “What your heart thinks is great, is great,” nineteenth century American poet Ralph Waldo Emerson said. “The soul’s emphasis is always right.”

I want to look deeper at the role of love in the story of King Edward and Mrs. Simpson, the couple who later became the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. But not the fairy-tale kind of love the story became for many, inspiring films, novels and poetry. (I remember my mother talking about how romantic it all seemed to her as a teenager in Alabama, reading news of the handsome king and the sacrifice he made for “the woman he loved.”) But what did David, soon after becoming King Edward, really give up? And what was it really for? Was it indeed for love or for a woman? Or was it to transform the monarchy, to gain his freedom, or perhaps to reclaim his soul? After his abdication “David later explained that what was at stake was not a choice between love and duty, but a ‘different concept of kingship’,” journalist Beatrix Campbell wrote. (Ironically, is this closer to the “model” of kingship that his great-great nephew William—a young man with a broad and equalitarian world view—will create?) Perhaps the power and bigger message of David’s choice was tainted when he went on to live a frivolous life as the Duke of Windsor, making some unwise decisions while living in the spotlight approaching and during a world war when England was in peril. Nevertheless, “he was making a point about love, women and kingship…,” Campbell added. “Impaled between love and duty, he insisted that love was his duty.”

By her uncle choosing this path not only changed his niece Elizabeth’s life path, but set (or perhaps re-set) her on an extremely duty-bound course, declaring “duty” as the center of “the inspiring exemplar of ideal family life,” wrote Howard Chua-Eoan in Time magazine in 2007. She put the whole Windsor clan to work in a regular, day-to-day, dutiful plan of action. “Elizabeth would serve. She would persevere. She would be dutiful. She would obey.” And with such focus, maybe she missed the emotional shifts her people were going through when Diana came on the scene in the 1980s and 90s; cultural changes that Diana—“the girl chosen to refresh the line, to bear its heirs, to be the new smiling face of the family”—recognized, related and responded to, and called out the monarchy for ignoring. Yet no matter how Queen Elizabeth had carefully and dutifully constructed this façade that she believed to be true and honest, “Diana found the dynasty dysfunctional, uncertain of its work, in truth more a firm than a family,” Chua-Eoan added. “Diana tried to serve, she tried to persevere. She tried to be dutiful. But in the end, she would not obey.” Nor had King Edward. Perhaps the world was not ready for a king to “bring his heart” to the throne, but Princess Diana later got the world’s attention by revealing what happens in a family not allowed to bring its heart along with them. (It occurs to me the Windsor family’s sacrificial trade-off for being immensely rich and privileged was to do your duty and happiness be damned. That was certainly the royal culture in which both David—King Edward—and Prince Charles grew up.) 
[To Be Continued...]

{*Part two of three from "The Woman I Love"....excerpt from my book in progress, tentatively titled, A Memory of Love: The Spiritual Mission of a Princess.}