Putting the Fairy Tale to Rest

So, where will you be at 3 a.m. Friday morning? Unlike many anglophiles and self-styled "royal watchers," I'll be in bed, sleeping soundly and enjoying that fact that I'm in no way motivated to get up at the butt-crack of dawn to watch a wedding - no matter whose it is - on TV.

Never mind that the wedding in question is that of Prince William of the House of Windsor and commoner Kate Middleton. Never mind that I've been force-fed the significance of the event from every chattering, well-manicured TV talking head across the cable and broadcast spectrum. And never mind that I have a daughter who could be learning a valuable lesson about life from this once-in-a-lifetime event.

Forget for a moment that the girl is only 3. And forget also that I generally regard the British royal family as an inbred, out-of-date, out-of-touch and generally unproductive segment of society not worthy of all the attention it receives.

Indeed, the important thing to remember on this blessed occasion is that this will be the royal wedding that finally takes all those soft-focus, Disney-fied myths about princes and princesses and mercifully shoots them in the head.

My daughter recently decided she was a huge fan of Disney's "Snow White," which dismayed me a little because it's perhaps the worst example of the "some day my prince will come" mentality. It plants in little girls' heads that they should be swept off their feet by a man who appears magically, who rescues them from all danger and dispair, and who then takes care of them in a weirdly paternalistic way for the rest of their lives.

Even when this sort of situation was even a remote possibility in reality, it rarely ended in a simple "and they lived happily ever after." There are always problems and challenges in a marriage, and only a juvenile dim-bulb like Snow White, who seemed to gain all fulfillment from cooking, cleaning and chasing after grubby little miners, could accept such an arrangement.

The excellent modern-day example of how this metality fails is the marriage that we've been subjected to second most often in the discussions of Kate and William's nuptials - that of his father, Prince Charles, to the late Princess Diana.

In what was lauded as another fairy-tale romance, shy and virginal Diana - barely out of her teens - was plucked from relative obscurity to marry the stuffy and priggish Prince Charles, who despite being able to get plenty of princely action, apparently couldn't settle on anyone who was "appropriate" to one day sit by his side on the throne.

And so, in one of the most effective bits of marketing ever embarked upon, the royal family sold the marriage as one that was perfect. As we know now, it was most certainly not.

Charles harbored a flame for another and didn't hesitate to act on it. Diana spiralled into mental illness and adultery of her own. Her tragic death gave those who would idolize her an ever-beautiful martyr, and Charles the chance to finally be with the woman who he loved all along. In short, it was a nightmare and not fair to either spouse, nor the children born of the union (who were evidence that the unhappy couple had managed to consumate the marriage at least twice).

Now one of those kids is getting hitched himself, and despite what the TV keeps telling you, this is no fairy tale romance. In fact, it's a brilliant reflection of how non-royal behavior has influenced the business of royal coupling for the better.

While both Kate and Diana had their own jobs and their own money, Kate has worked for far longer and has lived as her own woman farther into her 20s. The happy couple has also dated on and off for nearly a decade.

This point is important because it illustrates that this relationship had time to evolve from early infatuation to a more mature, long-term mindset. It's also been stated (though not in excplicit terms) that the couple has shacked up for a while, which also gave them a taste of what marital cohabitation will be like.

In short, they've dated much like any other couple out there, royal or not. And that is no fairy tale. It's fraught with ups and downs, delights and drama. It's a perfect example of how the princess myth that hamstrings girls and women when it comes to their relationships with men is an utter failure and will only truly work on screen. Despite the Cindarella-story aspects of "Pretty Woman," don't ever believe that it never came up later in the marriage that the groom was a rich, self-absorbed prick and the bride was a prostitute.

So as I sleep soundly during the happy moment, I'll have wished the royal couple well and offered my hopes that among all the other challenges of being royal, being trapped by the myth of it all being a fairy tale won't be one of them.