ALA KA FURU N'YE (may God bless their marriage, Bambara)
This was the remaining image of the wedding for me: although a shame the oarsmen are not shown. The royal couple did not sail, as erroneously stated in the article I just read in the Mail on line this morning, they were rowed across the glittering waters, amongst a host of Swedish, Danish (and one British) naval ships with crews saluting...It was fantastically theatrical, and about as regal as it gets- it reminded me of the opening of the film Indochine, or one of the films -can't remember which- about Henry the VIII or was it Elizabeth I ?- going down the Thames...
For the first time in history television cameras were allowed into the palace for the banquet of a royal wedding; the speeches, the cutting of the cake, and even the first walz. There was something moving about seeing this grandiose royal palace used for an event for which it was meant, filled with these kings and queens, many of whom no longer have a kingdom, rather than walking through it as a tourist admiring its artifacts as if in a museum.
There was also a feeling that this wonderful spectacle was one of the last displays of something that is probably coming towards its natural end; that these historic tiaras on these royal heads will probably only be seen in museums in less than a hundred years, because the relevance of a constitutional monarchy to our lives may finally be totally lost.
There is, for one thing, too much contradiction in the fact that people snigger and complain about Victoria's choice of husband as not being suitable, but at the same time noone would dream of suggesting that she married for any other reason than love...