Briefly: it's a fair generalisation for The Economist to say that no-one in Britain cares about the imminent royal wedding, beyond a frisson of idle glee at the thought of an extra day off work. I'm just old enough to remember the last one (I was five) and it was a big deal.
What has changed in the intervening thirty years? Everything that made royalty exceptional has become unexceptional. Their antics are therefore much less interesting.
Thirty years ago they were extraordinarilly rich, privileged and idolised despite having achived nothing of the remotest substance beyond an accident of birth. Today such people are the foundation of our utterly trivial daily newsflow, from celebrities who are famous for little more than singing badly but photogenically to bankers who retire into a life of conspicuous idleness on the proceeds of a handful of years spent picking stocks at random. Thirty years ago my childish notion that the Queen was the richest and most famous person in the world was at least plausible; today the idea that Prince William is either notably rich, famous or even powerful by the standards of the super-rich celebrity elite is laughable.
The pages of OK and Hello carry weddings just as notable practically every month. No wonder no-one cares overmuch about this one.
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