The Guest List

Westminster Abbey, that piece of landmark architecture in London, is preparing once again to host royals and celebrities; a guest list of 1,900 especially chosen to present themselves at the nuptials of a grandson of Queen Elizabeth II, right up there at the top of the ladder to ascend the throne after his father eventually does, for a very brief time. Oh yes, there's a bride, a commoner who had the fortitude and patience to live, on and off with Prince William for 8 years before he finally decided a permanent relationship looks good on a future king.

Prince William and Kate Middleton have been busy, along with their attendants, in a whirl of social decision-making, and the minutiae of planning for a royal event that will represent as extravagant and brilliantly entertaining to the slack-mouthed royal watchers-and-peepers for whom vicarious day dreams about princelings and princesses bring colour to their otherwise listless lives. No one will be able to escape notice of the event, for Westminster Abbey's bells will chime relentlessly for three hours following the wedding ceremony.

Invitees must be in an absolute tizzy about decorum and dress, lavishly spending on designer outfits that no one will notice but their spouses when the haute couture invoices finally arrive.
The House of Windsor has been busy calling in its favours and disseminating them as well. It is not only royalty and the aristocrats of theatre and popular arts and culture who have received invitations but a handful of ordinary folk from a village dear to the hearts of the betrothed. Former prime ministers of Britain of course, but definitely not if they represent Labour. Sorry, Messrs. Blair et Brown.

The dictators and autocrats and royalty of the Middle East are invited, however. And heads of Commonwealth countries; hello, Zimbabwe. Repressive regimes whose famous violations of the primary rights of their populations are welcome, while former Labour prime ministers of Britain are not. This is, after all, a rather eccentric country of eccentric people, royal members included. Rowan Atkinson who made a very comfortable living off portraying those eccentricities will be present, along with Elton John and David Beckham, the creme de la creme of Britain's sport-and-popular-culture elite.

Absolute majesty is demonstrated in blatant unconcern over such irrelevant optics as the invited presence of ruthless dictators whose protesting publics have been treated to very close and critical attention of their own armed forces, dispatching some unfortunates to the other world from whence no one has yet returned, while an unfortunate member of House of Windsor by marriage, quite out of favour with 'the family', will not attend, her children there with their father, absent their mother.

Among the pageantry of pomp and gilded splendour, a spectacle of royal ineptitude in failing to recognize moral and ethical values as reflected in their imperial choices.